Park Geun-hye became Korea’s first female president Wednesday. It’s time to congratulate the winner and comfort the loser. In a fair, relatively clean contest like this, however, all runners are victors. The biggest winners of all were the voters who braved frigid weather to record the highest turnout in recent memory.
It’s too bad that President-elect Park can ill afford to savor her hard-won election victory for long.
The global economy will get worse before it gets better, as major countries tighten their belts at home while resorting to beggar-thy-neighbor policies abroad. The political situation in this part of the world is the most volatile in decades with North Korea emerging as a serious nuclear power and Japan trying to turn back the historical clock.
Despite the ostensible growth of national power and prestige, Koreans are unhappier than ever, as shown by the country having the world’s highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate. Never has an election seen such a serious division among voters as the just-ended one, by age, gender, ideology, region and income bracket.
So the first task the new leader should tackle is to unite the fractured nation, without which she will be unable to accomplish anything. And Park should attain national unity by winning over the public, especially those unsupportive of her, instead of causing people to gather around the banners she hoists.
Likewise, Park won’t be able to get bipartisan support by just giving a couple of cabinet portfolios to opposition parties as a form of political spin. Even under a presidential system, there is little the chief executive can do without cooperation from the National Assembly. The parliament has recently won a new weapon named the filibuster system, meaning the new president cannot turn the most important election pledges into a reality without winning approval from 60 percent of lawmakers.
All this shows the grand unity should not stop at campaign slogan but become a political reality by treating political opponents as genuine partners. The time has also long past for minority parties to keep offering opposition for the sake of it, as has mostly been the case in this country’s political history. Good politicians and their parties don’t act in the interests of the next election but for the next generation.
The same should be said about the electorate. Koreans have tended to expect and demand much, probably too much, of their leaders, as if they were omnipotent beings. Most, if not all, of these illusionary expectations were not met, only leading to an imperial presidency on the part of leaders and political nihilism within the public. It’s time to throw away this outdated mentality and act like 21st century citizens. There should be no more presidents in Korea torn between pestering supporters and uncooperative, hostile non-supporters.
Most importantly, the new president must not repeat the mistake of the incumbent who regarded political power as a reward for his election victory, and Cabinet posts as trophies, while making a political vendetta against former rivals. Instead, Park will need to invite the opposition leader to the presidential mansion as often as possible for consultations, starting with a one-on-one meeting with her opposition contender, Moon Jae-in, as early as possible.
Winners shouldn’t be overjoyed, while losers needn’t be unduly depressed. Five years is not a long time. When Korean political parties and their supporters just accept defeat as an ordinary event, the nation’s democracy will improve further.
This will only become possible with constant attention by and feedback from the electorate, which explains why voters should not be masters only one day every five years but be more active participants in grass-roots democracy. There should be no passengers aboard the ship named the Republic of Korea, because each and every one should be a captain.