We usually don’t believe that much when politicians talk of reforms to their own activities. They make a big fuss whenever they talk about reforming parliamentary and party politics, often in the aftermath of election defeats or major political scandals. Many of these proposals simply fizzle out.
This scene is being reenacted in the ruling Saenuri Party, which pompously launched a reform committee to draw up proposals to cut the power and privileges of the members of the National Assembly.
On Tuesday, former Gyeonggi Province Gov. Kim Moon-soo, who heads the panel, put the proposals to a meeting of its lawmakers, in the hopes that he would get their endorsement and start work on drafting bills.
But most of the roughly 100 participants in the meeting opposed the proposals. Ten of the 15 speakers in the meeting, held behind closed doors, attacked Kim for cutting back on lawmakers’ power under the pretext of reform, according to participants.
It does not come as a surprise if one takes a look at the list of the proposals. They include those for restricting the immunity that forbids lawmakers from detention while the parliament is in session, tightening rules on raising political funds through book-publishing events, cutting lawmakers’ pay when the Assembly session is idle and banning lawmakers from taking concurrent posts.
As some participants in the Saenuri meeting said, these may be small things, compared with such “grand” political reforms as a mending the Constitution or rezoning election districts.
But what they do not know ― or pretend not to know ― is that things like these affect the public perception of lawmakers. Inarguably, politicians, especially members of the National Assembly, are given too much power and privilege for what they are doing.
One of the ruling party’s most urgent tasks is to push for the reform of the deficit-ridden pension for government workers. The party’s shameless rejection of the reform proposals makes one wonder how it is going to persuade civil servants to make sacrifices by accepting the pay-more, receive-less reform to their pensions while its members protect their own vested interests.
