President Park Geun-hye all but sloped off and barricaded herself inside Cheong Wa Dae Thursday, the fourth day since she took office. This is rather unusual for a new leader ― who should spend their first days in power holding conferences, visiting places and meeting people.
Park’s spokeswoman said the President needed a day’s breather after the deadly inauguration schedule. This excuse simply doesn’t wash with most Koreans who have witnessed candidate Park’s non-stop electioneering for months. Still it may be true that Park needs some time alone to ponder what’s gone so horribly wrong during the initial stages of her presidency.
More than two months have passed since Park was elected but she remains without government restructuring in place and a number of candidates nominated to be ministers are still not confirmed by the National Assembly. Little wonder that Park had to call off her first Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
And the nation’s first female President has only herself to blame for most, if not all, of these administrative quandaries.
Park’s problem boils down to the most ordinary yet very important act of governance for any leaders: decision-making. In brief, the utter lack of transparency that gripped her transition team and now her fledgling, half-constructed administration is a result of her go-it-alone governing style ― attending to all state affairs, even the most trifling ones, by herself and for herself.
Once decisions are made, the new leader, armed with unflinching self-righteousness, seldom reverses or even backs off from them. Park doesn’t allow her people any discretion to negotiate with the opposition parties. So the government reorganization bill is stuck along with a minor provision to reallocate the administration of Internet TV channels, and some of her nominees unqualified for Cabinet ministers can neither win approval in the parliament nor even withdraw without her okay.
Should, or would, Koreans watch this political stalemate for five years?
If Park concludes the answer is no ― and she must ― the President ought to change herself. Even her father and political mentor, former President Park Chung-hee, tried to listen to people’s opinions through the ruling party despite his iron-fisted rule, especially during the initial stages of his presidency. The younger Park must regard governing party leaders not as her messengers but partners. She should realize why leaders in old democracies, like the United States, often have to lobby to their own party members for key legislation.
It was noticeable for its absence in this regard Park’s use of such words as new politics, let alone democratic progress, during her 21-minute inaugural address, although political reform was one of her key campaign pledges in last year’s presidential election. As the leader of the ruling party, she used to criticize former President Lee Myung-bak’s "imperial presidency.” The change of position should be no reason Park should follow the footsteps of her predecessor in just a week of occupying Cheong Wa Dae. Restoration of parliamentary democracy must be one of Park’s foremost tasks.
What took Park to where she is now, was overcoming jeers directed at her for being the daughter of a dictator, by her ability to correct herself. Nothing shows this better than her successful preemption of the progressive political agenda by proposing welfare reform and "economic democratization,” although whether these can be implemented remains to be seen.
Now is the time for Park to prove through further self-correction that she has changed from being a politician seeking office into an effective head of state.
Most Koreans, including those who didn’t vote for her, may be wishing her success as President because this means progress for the nation. It will not be easy to change her lifelong ways of thinking and behaving. Harder still is becoming leader of a nation, and a successful one at that.