Roh's silence speaks volumes ahead of
polls By Gerard Young
SEOUL -
The biggest weapon South Korea's fledgling Uri Party has
in its election arsenal is disgraced President Roh
Moo-hyun.
The 57-year-old former human-rights
lawyer has said little since he was impeached on March
12, but he is still central in the current campaign,
which concludes with general elections on April 15. The
sluggish economy, North Korea's nuclear programs and
relations with the United States are all taking a back
seat to the ongoing battle over Roh's impeachment.
Though the president, stripped of all but his
title, remains silent while the Constitutional Court
decides whether to uphold the National Assembly's
opposition-driven impeachment, the battle over his fate
continues to rage publicly.
South Koreans,
according to public opinion polls, did not want Roh
impeached, and their views have not changed since. About
70 percent oppose Roh being forced to the sidelines.
That anger is translating into strong support
for the Uri Party, also called Our Open Party and formed
in September by 47 Roh loyalists. A Focus Research poll,
one of the last conducted before Friday's deadline for
carrying out election surveys, showed Uri with 43.9
percent of the vote. The Grand National Party (GNP),
which held a majority in the 273-seat National Assembly,
had plummeted to 17.9 percent.
Though Uri leaped
out in front in January after choosing a charismatic new
leader, it doubled its poll support after the
impeachment.
The Millennium Democratic Party
(MDP), under whose banner Roh ran in the 2002
presidential elections, has almost slipped entirely from
the radar screen, with just 3.6 percent support from
those polled.
Roh has to be having a tough time
keeping his thoughts to himself. Silence is tough for a
man whose impeachment woes came out of his running afoul
of the National Election Commission by stating in a TV
forum he would do everything legally possible to ensure
Uri does well in the elections. In South Korean politics
that is a no-no. Presidents are not supposed to back any
horse in an election race. All the opposition asked for
was an apology, and the public seemed to agree, but Roh
held his tongue.
Some say the self-educated
grandfather is wily enough to time his remarks so they
show passion rather than political misstep. A few of the
more cynical observers have even suggested he goaded
opposition parties into impeaching him, knowing his
transgressions were minor enough to survive court
scrutiny and feeling confident it would ultimately hurt
his foes more severely than him.
The president
is banking on Uri doing well, if not winning an outright
majority. His first year in office has been a disaster.
Part of his problem is his shoot-from-the-lip style,
which includes such gaffes as disparaging the Japanese
prime minister as well as his indecisiveness over
whether he should cozy up to the United States or pander
to the country's growing anti-American sentiment.
But his biggest problem has been his inability
to get anything done since he took office in February
2003. He has battled with the GNP over who was the
biggest cheater in presidential election campaign
funding and other financial irregularities. The dirt
that didn't stick to him splashed the opposition,
further fueling the rival parties' desire to find new
ways to discredit Roh.
He irked the MDP when he
quit their ranks, then casually remarked he would join
Uri "at an appropriate time". Despite his cheerleading
for Uri, the appropriate time has not arrived.
The National Assembly has been hamstrung and so
has Roh. It took more than a year to get a free-trade
agreement with Chile ratified though nervous foreign
investors were watching lawmakers' antics with little
amusement and much concern. The planned deployment of
South Korean troops to Iraq was jeopardized by political
wrangling.
For Roh to have any success in
bringing in policies to trigger an economic recovery or
aid other reforms, he needs the Uri Party to do well.
Numerous Roh cabinet ministers and presidential staff
have left the bureaucracy to run as Uri candidates. In
many countries bureaucrats do not dare leave the safe
confines of their civil-service offices and cabinet
ministers have reached the pinnacles of their careers.
In South Korea, when the president nudges those
loyalists toward his favorite party, they take up the
fight for the good of the cause.
"He could
manage state affairs more smoothly" with a Uri victory,
said Seo Hyun-jin, the Korea Herald's presidential
reporter.
Roh has said he will step down if the
Uri Party doesn't fare well. However, as with many of
his comments, the president didn't define what he means
by "well". Even if he did, it probably would not be cast
in stone. He previously vowed to step down should his
illegal campaign funds in 2002 total more than 10
percent of the GNP candidate. After a prosecutor
reported he had surpassed the magic number, Roh simply
dismissed the report as bad math.
In reality,
Roh should not be a factor in the election. After
hitting an approval rating of about 70 percent soon
after his inauguration, he plunged to 30 percent by most
recent public opinion polls.
It's not that South
Koreans really like the self-made son of peasants;
rather they are angry with the MDP, which introduced the
impeachment motion, and the GNP, which threatened to
expel its members if they did not support the bill. They
show that displeasure by demonstrating on streets across
the country. They have made their views clear in public
opinion polls. And it is a good bet they are going to
punish the two main opposition parties on April 15.
Voters see the impeachment as the worst sort of
political posturing, worse even than the allegations
that have been flying back and forth over presidential
campaign financing misdeeds.
"The impeachment
really backfired on the opposition," Seoul investment
manager Hong Hyeon Ki told Bloomberg News last week.
"Voters are also sick of the scandals that have plagued
the country since last year. I think Uri may gain a
National Assembly majority."
As for Korea Herald
reporter Seo, she is not quite ready to give the Uri
Party the best seats in the house, though she thinks it
will do well.
Too many surprises occur in the
rough-and-tumble world of Korean politics to discount a
turn of fortunes for the GNP, even though the MDP by all
accounts is in tatters.
As well, Korean voters
are very polarized based on region. Staunch conservative
voters who have long supported the GNP and its
successors could well hold their noses and vote the way
they always have throughout their lives. Older voters
tend to favor the majority party, while the country's
younger citizens desire reform and a move away from the
old political ways in which corruption and bribery were
as much of election campaigns as posters and buttons.
Roh hoped to put an end to that regionalism that
also includes areas that favor the government and
majority party being rewarded with a variety of perks.
An election victory for Uri could go a long way to
making that campaign promise come true.
What
also could throw a wrench into the works is South
Korea's two-ballot system, in which voters get to choose
a candidate as well as a party. Any party that garners 3
percent of the overall vote or elects five members is
eligible to share in the 56 proportional-representation
seats.
Also, the opposition drove hard in the
month leading up to the election campaign to redesign
the electoral map. The 17th National Assembly will have
299 seats, an increase of 26 from four years ago when
voters last went to the polls.
What is at
stake Foreign investors are getting fed up with
the prolonged instability in South Korean government, a
notion that doesn't seem to deter lawmakers, who are
often accused of being more interested in their own
futures than that of the country. The impeachment sent
the markets into a slide, though they recovered a few
days later.
With most pundits predicting Roh's
impeachment will be overturned by the court, which has
just started its preliminary work, the president needs a
supportive National Assembly to get anything done on his
expected return. If not, it will be the same story as
this past year during the last four of his presidency.
South Korean presidents only serve one term.
With China becoming ever more appealing to
foreign investors, many South Koreans worry about their
status as the world's 12th-largest economy. How South
Korea's economy responds will in large part be
influenced by the type of government it has. That means
one where the president and National Assembly at least
find common ground in areas where the country needs
attention and legislators and Roh stop using vetoes like
political hand grenades.
Though the outcome of
the election may still be a cloudy, it is clear many
candidates want to be a part of whatever happens. As of
the weekend, about 1,175 candidates had filed papers
with the National Election Commission. The Uri Party led
the way with about 240.
And though the official
14-day campaign is just getting under way, the
commission reports more than 2,400 cases of illegal
election campaigning, already more than four years ago.
Currently, the Grand National Party holds 145
seats while the Millennium Democratic Party has 64 and
Uri 47. The rest are held by the tiny United Liberal
Democrat party, independents and the Speaker.
As
for Roh, he is likely aching to speak out, but for the
Uri Party his silence is saying a lot.
Gerard Young is a Canadian journalist
currently based in Seoul.
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