New Assembly gets off to shaky start

Lawmakers of the main opposition United Future Party walk out of the opening plenary session of the 21st National Assembly, Friday. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-geun

Main opposition party lawmakers walk out to protest ruling party's 'unilateral' decision to hold opening session

By Jung Da-min

The 21st National Assembly held its opening session, Friday, but it was crippled only 11 minutes later as members of the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) left the plenary chamber to protest the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's (DPK) push to hold the session despite its opposition following conflicts over how to form standing committees.

Although the 21st Assembly “succeeded” in holding the opening session on the date designated by the National Assembly Act, the first time in 16 years since the 17th Assembly, the rupture showed a bumpy road ahead for the rival parties in cooperation to make decisions for the next four years.

Floor leaders of the UFP and the DPK had held talks until the last moment, with the latter persuading the former to participate, without compromise. When the session started at 10 a.m., UFP members attended ― not because they accepted it as a legitimate session but to deliver their message of protest.

“There has been no agreement between the parties over how to form the standing committees yet, which means the parties were not able to hold the opening session; therefore, today's session is illegitimate,” UFP floor leader Rep. Joo Ho-young said after getting the right to speak.

“The UFP lawmakers came here to make this point clear and protest the opening of the session.”

He said the DPK, which holds 177 seats in the 300-strong Assembly, should not have pushed ahead with its session opening or other issues by taking advantage of its majority.

“Such a push is also against the DPK's request for us to cooperate to deal with state affairs in the difficult situation (amid the coronavirus pandemic),” Joo said. “If problems take place in the future regarding the Assembly's operation, the DPK, which held this unacceptable session today, will be to blame.”

Then the lawmakers ― 103 from the UFP and four independent lawmakers who had left the party to run in the general election after failing to get the party's nomination ― left the plenary chamber just 11 minutes after the session started.

The remaining 193 lawmakers, including 177 from the ruling party and 14 from other minor parties and two independent lawmakers, conducted votes to elect six-term DPK lawmaker Rep. Park Byeong-seug as speaker and four-term DPK lawmaker Rep. Kim Sang-hee as one of two deputy speakers allocated for the ruling bloc, to serve the first half of the 21st Assembly.

The remaining deputy speaker post allocated for the main opposition has been reserved for the UFP's Rep. Chung Jin-suk, but the vote for Chung was not held during the session due to the UFP boycott.

On Tuesday, the DPK joined other minor opposition parties, including the Justice Party and the Open Minjoo Party, to open the session by submitting a request to convene an extraordinary session to the National Assembly Secretariat's office. It cited a clause in the National Assembly Act that says the opening session should be held on the seventh day after the new Assembly's start. The 21st Assembly began on May 30.

The designated date of the opening session had not been met for many of the previous assemblies in recent decades, due to prolonged negotiations between the parties over how to form the standing committees. The problem is that each party wants to take the head positions of key committees for legislative activities for major policies, such as the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts.

While the UFP says it should take the two committees' chief positions because it has long been customary for the opposition bloc to take it to hold the ruling bloc in check, the DPK says it does not need to follow the custom because the situation is different with the ruling party holding an absolute majority in the new Assembly.

“The DPK will not be looking to left and right but make a next step forward,” DPK floor leader Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon said during a press conference after the opening session. “We are going to form the standing committees by the designated date by the National Assembly Act.”

Under the Act, the 21st National Assembly should complete the process of dividing 300 lawmakers into the 18 committees and selecting heads of each committee by June 8.

“If the main opposition does not observe the act just as with the bad practices in the past, we cannot but push forward the formation of the committees by the rules,” Kim said, referring to the act, which gives the speaker the power to appoint heads of committees.