The National Assembly is scheduled to start a monthlong extraordinary session this week to handle bills related to the public’s lives amid expectations of intense bipartisan wrangling over key issues.
The special session will start on Monday with an emergency two-day interpellation on state affairs, during which the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) are likely to clash over a snowballing scandal surrounding a former aide to President Park Geun-hye.
Late last month, a local daily reported that Jeong Yun-hoe, Park’s chief of staff during her term in parliament, meddled in state affairs behind the scenes through regular meetings with a group of key presidential officials.
In the meetings, Jeong, who holds no official title in the current government, plotted to oust Park’s current chief secretary, Kim Ki-choon, the Segye Times reported, citing an internal document from the presidential office.
According to watchers, the NPAD will likely tighten the screws on the Park administration, demanding a special council probe into the allegations, a public apology from Park and a reshuffle of key presidential secretaries.
The governing party, however, insists that political parties should wait until the prosecution completes the ongoing investigation.
The rival parties are also expected to lock horns with each other over other issues.
The two sides agreed Wednesday to launch a parliamentary investigation into allegations of corruption surrounding overseas resource development projects carried out under the administration of former President Lee Myung-bak.
The parties will form a fact-finding committee within the year to look into allegations the Lee administration, which was in office from 2008-2013, spent tens of billions of dollars on various natural resources development projects overseas with few results.
In exchange for the agreement on the parliamentary probes, the ruling party won the opposition party’s approval to begin discussions on President Park’s push to reform the pension program for civil servants.
But the ruling party demanded later that the parliamentary investigation be conducted simultaneously with discussions on the pension reform, which the NPAD has spurned. (Yonhap)
