By Hong Moon-jong
The mainstream faction of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) is joining President Lee Myung-bak’s effort to change the Constitution. Thirty-five GNP lawmakers recently held a meeting to promote constitutional change.
I do not have any intention to refute the move as the President and his followers believe they are promoting the constitutional amendment for the sake of the nation and the people.
However, I think it is too late for the Lee administration to make this move. It might be a different story if President Lee had pushed for an amendment from the beginning of his presidency, while giving up his vested political interests and running the potential risk of reducing his own term of office.
But now, floating the idea of constitutional change could be construed as an ill-intended political gambit by the administration and the ruling party. This could be all the more so because all nine constitutional amendments, except one, were politically motivated by the past administrations since the first Constitution was promulgated in 1948.
Furthermore, the people are now undergoing difficult times due to the damage caused by foot-and-mouth disease, soaring consumer prices, and skyrocketing rents for apartments and homes.
On the part of the public, it is not easy to understand why President Lee and members of his GNP faction are proposing constitutional change.
For GNP lawmakers who are for the amendment, this issue is also hard to tackle. They sensed public sentiment against the move in their districts last week during the Lunar New Year holiday. More and more people are against or at least indifferent to any constitutional amendment.
The legislators are worried about this situation as general elections and a presidential poll are scheduled for next year. The constitutional issue will not provide any excuse for political parties, ruling or opposition, to turn against the will of the people.
The people already harbor deep distrust in lawmakers and politicians, something the latter will find hard to regain. We already have seen the people giving the cold shoulder to the government and the majority party that have lost this trust.
The current debate over constitutional revision seems to be taking a wrong direction as President Lee and his GNP lawmakers refuse to learn a lesson from his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun who also sought to change the supreme charter.
At that time, Roh and the presidential office strongly emphasized the true nature of the constitutional amendment; however, people continuously doubted his intention in changing the Constitution.
There were suspicions that President Roh and his party might have taken advantage of the issue for political gain or partisan interests.
People could have called into question the former president’s political motives behind any amendment. Actually, President Roh had tried to use the issue as a leverage to press ahead with political realignment.
During a nationally-televised discussion with two panelists at Cheong Wa Dae on Feb. 1, President Lee made a remark on constitutional change. If he sincerely believes that reforming the Constitution is in the national interest, he should first try to get the public’s consent.
President Lee should realize that constitutional amendment is such a sensitive issue that the public could misunderstand it and doubt his political intentions. Even though the Constitution has become his top concern, he must come to the conclusion that the issue should be solved by the next government.
In this way, the President might shake off suspicions and calm controversy over the issue. Moreover, rather than focusing on constitutional amendments, he needs to deal with other urgent issues and problems before his term ends.
By doing so, he could prevent himself from becoming a lame-duck president. He could spend his last days in the presidency giving a successful performance.
I don’t believe there are many people who do not feel a need to rewrite the Constitution to cope with the rapid political and socioeconomic changes in the 21st century.
The problem is whether President Lee and GNP lawmakers have a pure and sincere intention regarding the revision. Now, they should be satisfied with their job of creating an environment conducive to constitutional reform so that the next administration can officially start a revision process.
They must keep in mind that it is reckless to think that they may succeed in having a new Constitution under the Lee administration. Most people are sick and tired of brewing factional and partisan struggles over the issue. Don’t try anymore to throw people deeper into this thorny problem.
The writer is president of Kyungmin College in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province.