The confrontation between President Park Geun-hye and the National Assembly ― or to be more exact, the opposition ― over a controversial bill that passed the legislature last week has become a thorny issue.
Park made it clear that she would veto the bill ― which empowers the legislature to demand government offices amend administrative ordinances and decrees ― because it violates the constitutional separation of powers among the three branches of government.
The bill would paralyze government operations and put the executive branch into “a state of lethargy,” Park said.
This enraged the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, which responded with the announcement of its push to revise 11 administrative ordinances and decrees that it claimed do not conform to the laws on which they were based.
The controversy, which highlights all the stupidity of Korean politics, started when the National Assembly passed the bill last Friday under an agreement between the ruling and opposition parties.
The revision bill to the National Assembly Law was part of a package legislative deal aimed at approving the reform bill for the civil service pension system. The NPAD linked the passage of the pension reform bill to the bill on ordinances because it wanted to apply it to a disputed ordinance for the Special Sewol Act.
The ordinance, which the government wrote under the special act legislated to probe the cause of the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry in April last year, stipulates that a government official be named to a mid-level, but key, post of the special investigation panel. Bereaved families of the Sewol victims and other critics pushed the opposition to pressure the government into retracting the ordinance, claiming that it does not conform to the act that leaves its prime authority to civilians.
Both the government and the ruling party rejected the demand, and the NPAD chose to revise the National Assembly Law to address the problem with the Sewol ordinance. The opposition cannot avoid blame for creating the stir only to amend a single minor ordinance.
Just as stupid was the ruling Saenuri Party, which, preoccupied with the passage of the pension reform bill, consented to the NPAD demand without careful consideration of what the revision bill would mean.
It is comical that only after Park took issue with the bill did Saenuri officials say that the bill’s wording did not absolutely oblige government offices to comply with a demand by the National Assembly to amend ordinances and decrees. The NPAD, of course, does not agree with that assessment.
The fundamental question here is that the bill gives the National Assembly power in excess of the constitutional principle of the separation of powers among the three branches of government.
The executive branch has the right to lay down rules and guidelines to implement laws enacted by the National Assembly. Whether ordinances and decrees violate the laws above them or not should be determined by the judiciary, and not the legislative or executive branches. This is the principle of the checks and balances our constitutional fathers had in mind.
The ruling and opposition parties should sit face to face to resolve the issue. If they cannot agree on the unconstitutionality of the bill, they will be able to seek the judgement of the Constitutional Court.
