The presidential office expressed regret Thursday over the failed parliamentary passage of a pension reform bill for public workers, one of President Park Geun-hye’s policy priorities.
“It is very regretful that the ruling and opposition parties failed to keep their promise to citizens after repeated difficulties in negotiations over the public worker pension reform,” Kim Sung-woo, the chief presidential press secretary, said in a briefing.
On the last day of the recent extra National Assembly session on Wednesday, the rival parties tried to pass the ruling party-led bill designed to restructure the deficit-ridden pension system for civil servants.
But the efforts fell through as the ruling Saenuri Party rejected the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy’s compromise proposal to hike payments of the national pension program.
“It would be proper if politicians first achieve a reform of the public employee pension and then move to the national pension in order to secure financial stability and bolster the function of retirement income, if they really work for citizens,” the secretary noted.
The secretary also slammed the rival parties for complicating the public worker pension reform efforts by bringing up the national pension issue.
The rival parties had to collect public opinion before taking issue with public pension because it is directly linked to national finance, Kim said, adding that “if this public worker pension reform failed, the nation and politicians will be put in a position to pass debt on to future citizens and young people.”
Kim also called on the rival parties to revive efforts to pass the reform bill.
National Assembly Speaker Chung Eui-hwa called another extra parliamentary session on Thursday, which will begin Monday for a one-month run in a bid to cope with the reforms again.
The ruling party denounced NPAD leader Moon Jae-in for the parliamentary impasse, with the party’s spokesman Kim Young-woo saying, “We suspect Chairman Moon’s promise to reform the civil servant pension to be a lie.”
Moon, on his part, accused the ruling party of crushing a bipartisan agreement to pass a concerted bill by rejecting the opposition’s compromise.
“The Saenuri Party should come back to the spirit of social agreement,” he said.
The public employee pension reform was at the core of President Park’s deregulation and reform campaign aimed at reviving the stagnant economy. (Yonhap)
