President Park Geun-hye, in nature, is self-righteous and unilateral. One need not look no further than the way she pushes the replacement of privately published Korean history textbooks for middle and high school students with state-authored ones.
Park’s such “nobody but me is right and you should just follow me” approach is indiscriminate, with anyone — even ruling party members and the National Assembly as a whole — capable of becoming the target of her finger-pointing.
Park, herself a former lawmaker, has a very critical view of the parliament, not least the current one. On Tuesday, Park seemed to send the message that her patience had run out.
Speaking in the weekly Cabinet meeting, Park lambasted the parliament for, among other things, dragging its feet on what she called key legislative bills for the people’s daily lives and the national economy.
She mentioned the bills, including those for ratifying the Korea-China free trade agreement and following up on labor market reforms, one by one. A high-pitched Park said that the “infertile” National Assembly was holding people’s lives and the national economy hostage and that people would never forgive lawmakers if they did not pass the bills in due time.
It is not comfortable to hear words like infertile and hostage coming from the president. Moreover, Park’s offensive came at an inappropriate time: The opposition, which had boycotted the parliament over the textbook issue, came back to the floor and leaders of the rival parties were working into the night to reach a compromise on redrawing constituencies for the next parliamentary elections.
There was a more disturbing part in Park’s comments on the National Assembly: She said that voters should select for the National Assembly only “truthful” people who can work for them.
She apparently referred to the next parliamentary election slated for next April. This is not the first time that Park has mentioned the upcoming election. Pressuring the ruling party floor leader to resign over a legislative dispute in the summer, Park accused Rep. Yoo Seong-min of engaging in “politics of betrayal,” saying that such people should be given “fair public judgement” through elections.
All these indicate that Park wants to use the next election to weed out lawmakers she thinks are not truthful and to bring in people she see as truthful.
As a matter of fact, there has been a strong undercurrent indicating that Park wants to build the next National Assembly around people close to her. She has allowed no less than seven Cabinet members – including the two deputy prime ministers – to quit their posts to run in the election. About 10 former senior Blue House aides have also thrown their hats into the ring.
Many of the former senior officials are expected to run in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, where Park enjoys such high popularity that anyone on the ruling party ticket will have an easy chance of being elected. Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun, a member of Park’s inner circle, said that many of the current lawmakers from Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province should be replaced.
Now it is easy to understand why the president raises her voice in criticizing the current crop of lawmakers. She wants to justify her move to take revenge on people like Yoo and send as many close associates as possible to the next parliament.
