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Speaker to open plenary session by authority on Sept. 26
National Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa presides over a meeting with members of the standing committee at the National Assembly, Seoul, Tuesday. He said he will open a plenary session on Sept. 26 by using his authority for the parliament to deliberate over 91 stalled bills. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
By Jun Ji-hye
The National Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa said Tuesday that he will use his authority to open a plenary session on Sept. 26 for the parliament to deliberate over 91 bills that have remained pending since the Sewol ferry disaster in April.
“The speaker sympathizes with the argument that the Assembly can no longer delay its duties,” read a statement from the office of the speaker.
The announcement came a few hours after Rep. Lee Wan-koo, floor leader of the governing Saenuri Party, urged Chung to set up a schedule for the plenary sessions. He said that his party can no longer wait for an agreement from the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD).
Once the plenary session is held, the ruling party will be able to unilaterally pass the backlog of pending bills because it holds a majority of seats.
“We should not leave the Assembly as it is. I believe the people will understand (the ruling party’s unilateral processing),” said the ruling party Chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung.
Under the National Assembly Law, plenary sessions can be held after parties agree on the schedules at the Steering Committee meeting. In the event that both rivals fail to reach a consensus, the law allows the speaker to draw up the schedule himself.
The ruling party tried to hold the Steering Committee meeting on Tuesday morning, but the meeting foundered due to an absence of NPAD members.
The governing camp has claimed that Chung should open the plenary session at the earliest possible date, while the NPAD argues that the speaker does not have such authority.
Chung’s announcement on Tuesday is expected to foster resistance from the largest opposition party.
The governing side’s move toward unilateral processing of the bills comes as internal discord within the NPAD is deepening with its interim leader Rep. Park Young-sun being pressured to step down.
As Park has been in seclusion since Monday, the NPAD is currently suffering from a leadership vacuum, resulting in the ruling party losing its negotiation partner.
Park became a subject of criticism from her fellow lawmakers due to two failures to push through the Sewol bill which was intended to establish a fact-finding committee to investigate the man-made ferry disaster, after protests from the relatives of those who died.
Her failed bid to recruit two outsiders, professors Lee Sang-don and Ahn Kyong-whan, to lead the opposition’s emergency planning committee as co-chairmen resulted in her ending up in deeper political hot water.
While rival parties have been at odds over the Sewol bill, the parliament has not passed a single bill since May.
The NPAD has been clinging to its position that the Sewol bill should be addressed with the highest priority before other pending bills are discussed.
At the center of controversy regarding the special bill is whether to grant the fact-finding committee full investigative powers and the power to indict people suspected of involvement in direct and associated actions that caused the Sewol ferry to sink with the loss of more than 300 lives, most of them high school children.
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