By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporters
Opposition parties vehemently criticized the government's decision Monday to scrap its original plan to build Sejong City as an administrative town and replace it with a science and business complex.
They vowed to block the passage of the revision at all costs.
The Lee Myung-bak administration's plan will greatly hamper balanced regional development and siphon off corporate investment initially planned for other regional projects, said Chung Sye-kyun, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP).
"The administration is excessively clinging to absurd policies," Chung said, vowing to stop the government's move to push the alternative plan.
The DP regarded the revision as a betrayal of the people.
"The government has trampled on the pride of people in the Chungcheong provinces with the alternative plan," DP spokesman Noh Young-min said.
"The President has also broken his own promise that he had promised to keep 20 times," Noh said.
During the 2007 campaign, President Lee pledged to uphold the original plan passed under the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration.
The DP plans to continue to hold rallies in protest of the government's reversal of the administrative town plan.
The Chungcheong-based Liberty Forward Party (LFP) Chairman Lee Hoi-chang said, "The revision plan will be recorded as the greatest policy failure in history, breeding conflict among the people and splitting the nation."
The conservative LFP plans to ally with the liberal DP to submit a motion to the National Assembly calling for Prime Minister Chung Un-chan's dismissal.
Other opposition parties, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), the Creative Korea Party (CKP) and the New Progressive Party (NPP), also condemned the government's revision, saying it was designed to grant enormous privileges to conglomerates.
The DLP called the plan a scheme to sell the land of ordinary people to chaebol.
The CKP said it would hamper balanced regional development and hardly help the country to decentralize the population around the capital.
The NPP branded it as President Lee's political maneuver to strengthen his position by fueling conflict among the people.
National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyong-o requested the government make a thorough review of the plan before submitting it to the Assembly, and to resolve contentious issues through dialogue.
"There is no need for the government to rush to submit the bill to parliament, as the next extraordinary session will take place no earlier than February," said Kim.
The speaker added that parliament would handle the bill through due process when submitted.
Meanwhile, the governing Grand National Party (GNP) expressed its hope that the public will support the changed plan, which it claimed will serve as an opportunity to bring about national unity. "Our people will make a wise decision that serves the long-term interests of the country," GNP Chairman Chung Mong-joon said.
Civic groups were divided over the government's decision.
The People's Coalition for Sejong City Revision, which is made up of some 200 conservative groups, supported the plan.
The coalition claimed the relocation of the government offices in accordance to the original plan would lead to inefficiency in administrative affairs and deter national competiveness.
However, several civic groups, including the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice, said the government's revision proposal is a setback from the original plan.
They claimed that the original project also included a plan to build a science and business belt, and house educational institutes.