School meal vote planned Aug. 24

Residents to choose between full-scale and gradual provision of free lunch

By Kim Rahn

A referendum on the provision of free school meals in the capital will likely take place on Aug. 24, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said Monday.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon sent official documents about the referendum to the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission Monday to fix the voting date and finalize the wording on the ballot paper.

Amid endless arguments between those agreeing with the lunch program and those opposing it, several lawsuits and petitions have been filed on the legitimacy of the vote.

“Mayor Oh plans to make an official announcement about the referendum as early as Thursday, including announcing that the voting date is likely to be Aug. 24, though we need consent from the commission,” spokesman Lee Jong-hyun said at a media briefing.

What the vote is about

The referendum will decide whether to provide free meals to all students at elementary schools or only to those from lower-income families.

The Seoul Metropolitan Council, dominated by opposition Democratic Party members, and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, run by progressive superintendant Kwak No-hyun, planned to provide free meals to all students at elementary schools regardless of their parents’ financial status starting this year, and to expand the program to middle schools in 2012. The education office is pushing ahead with the plan, currently offering free lunches to first to fourth graders at elementary schools.

But Oh said the free lunch program should only be available to students from lower-income families and expanded gradually while the budget for those in higher-income families should be spent on other educational needs. He has refused to execute the budget the council allocated for the lunch program.

In the referendum, citizens will have to select between two options. One option will be: “Expand free lunch program gradually by 2014 to students of families from the bottom 50 percent in terms of income at elementary, middle and high schools.” The other choice will read: “Provide free lunch to all students at elementary schools starting 2011 regardless of family income levels and all students at middle schools starting in 2012.”

Rocky road still ahead

Whether the referendum will go ahead as planned and the result will be valid, however, remains unclear, as those supporting free meals for all students claim the referendum is legally flawed.

On July 15, a coalition of civic groups and opposition parties asked the Seoul Administrative Court to make the city government submit the list of citizens’ signatures collected to call for the vote. It claimed the list should be kept as evidence of “illegal signature collection” and all the names on the list should be reviewed.

But the court rejected the request Monday, saying it was unlikely they were forged.

The coalition also asked the court to stop the referendum process, claiming the vote was unlawful. It claimed the city government filed a suit with the Supreme Court to annul the city council’s passage of the ordinance on the meal program, and processing the vote before a court decision is a violation of the law on referenda.

It also claimed the person in charge of the meal program is the educational office head, so Oh’s processing the vote infringes on Kwak’s authority. In a related claim, Kwak is considering asking the Constitutional Court to decide on who has the final authority.

The court will make a decision on whether to stop the vote or not before the polling day. If it accepts the request, the referendum will be delayed until after Oct. 26, when a by-election is scheduled. The law bans holding a referendum in the 60 days before another poll.