ed Talks with opposition

Policy consultation meeting to help ease partisan strife

Dialogue and communication are often referred to as the basic tenets of democracy. Yet this axiom is not followed properly in Korea where people are fed up with dead-end partisan confrontations. For this reason, it has been common to see ``warriors’’ from the rival parties clash head-on at the National Assembly over contentious proposed bills.

Given this, it’s encouraging that the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) had a policy consultation meeting with the government on Wednesday for the first time since President Park Geun-hye took office in late February. Jang Byung-wan, the DP’s chief policymaker, and other lawmakers discussed allocating more fiscal support for free childcare and measures to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants with government officials co-headed by Minister of Health and Welfare Jin Young and Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Yoon Sang-jik.

We welcome the revived opposition-administration meeting in the hope that it will help ease consumptive partisan strife. The last opposition-government meeting took place in October 2010 and in June 2011, the ruling and opposition parties held a three-way meeting with the government regarding tuition fees by half.

Since then, there have not been such meetings, and Cabinet ministers have occasionally met with opposition leaders to beg for cooperation in dealing with bills. As a DP spokeswoman said, the meeting is a step forward, and we hope that the two sides will continue to have policy consultation meetings so that they can serve as communication channels between the administration and those in opposition.

We can’t overemphasize the importance of the opposition-administration talks, given that the rival parties had fierce confrontations over economic democratization bills, parliamentary audits of the national intelligence agency’s involvement in the presidential election and other crucial issues.

President Park Geun-hye and her ministers will find it much easier to manage state affairs if they seek understanding and cooperation from the political opposition in advance through such meetings. This is all the more so, considering that it’s all but impossible to deal with contentious bills without consent from opposition lawmakers because of the ``anti-scuffle law’’ that was introduced under a bipartisan agreement to prevent physical clashes at the Assembly.

Against this hopeful backdrop, the government needs to regard the opposition as a genuine partner in state affairs and make every effort to reflect suggestions from oppositionists in policies. This means that the opposition-administration meeting should not be merely a formality that government officials routinely go through for a fair bit of self-justification.

The DP, for its part, needs to cooperate on state affairs in earnest and show a greater sense of responsibility. Opposition for the sake of opposition no longer holds good. This will undoubtedly help the liberal party ― which has been struggling with approval ratings of 10 percent or so in recent months ― retake power five year later. It will be critical for the administration and the opposition to have regular meetings.