Lee Urges Absentee Vote for Overseas Citizens
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Presidential nominee Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party (GNP) Monday urged lawmakers to legislate a bill to grant all citizens abroad the right to vote in major elections.
``It does not make sense that overseas citizens are not entitled to cast their ballot in elections because they live in foreign countries. The government has granted the voting right to foreigners having lived more than 3 years in the country,'' Lee said.
If political parties agree to introduce the legislation before October, about 2.1 million citizens abroad will be allowed to vote in the Dec.19 presidential election.
Experts said the possible inclusion of these new voters will have considerable implications for the election results.
The debate over granting nationals overseas voting rights has been further heated since the Constitutional Court ruled in late June that the current legislation preventing foreign residents from voting goes against the Constitution.
To date, partisan interests are a major stumbling block in the legislation becoming effective.
While the GNP supports the right to vote for all citizens, the lawmakers of the United New Democratic Party (UNDP) said suffrage should only be given to short-term residents abroad and be expanded to all others one step at a time.
The proponents of the GNP plan said that all Korean citizens are entitled to voting and granting citizens suffrage is one of the key guiding lights of the Constitution.
They also said there are no rules or legal systems currently in place that can distinguish short-term from long-term residents abroad.
The opponents of the plan hold the view that permanent residents overseas tend to show conservative voting behavior.
Therefore the liberal party members are slow to empower all voters to cast their ballots in the presidential election at a time.
As a National Assembly session opens Monday, a growing number of political analysts showed interest in the possibility of the two parties reaching an agreement on this issue by the end of September.