The ties between the president and the Saenuri Party, which was formerly the ruling Grand National Party, are coming to a dead end. The situation worsened as President Lee Myung-bak’s chief secretary for liaison with the party resigned for his role in a political payoff scandal that happened three years ago involving the party’s former chairman.
The Blue House is looking for a seasoned politician to replace Kim Hyo-jae who is leaving the presidential staff after eight months in office, but whoever is named will face extreme difficulties in performing his mission under the current sour relations between the two pillars of governance. Some doubt the need to keep the position of chief secretary for political affairs in the presidential office.
Kim has been summoned for questioning by the Seoul prosecution on Wednesday as a witness on the alleged distribution of cash to Grand National Party delegates at a convention in July 2008 on behalf of Park Hee-tae, who was then a candidate for the party chair and later served as National Assembly speaker. Kim, then an Assemblyman, was chief aide to Park. Prosecutors indicate that Kim could be treated as a criminal suspect.
With the National Assembly elections less than two months away, the current leadership of the Saenuri Party believes that dissociating the party from the increasingly unpopular president will help in its campaign. Some members of the emergency committee headed by Park Geun-hye speak of asking Lee to leave the party “voluntarily.”
Korean politics has the peculiar tradition of presidents leaving the ruling party during their tenure. Roh Tae-woo renounced his party membership in 1992 in a conflict with the party’s presidential nominee Kim Young-sam. Kim also left the party in a dispute with party nominee Lee Hoi-chang only a month before the election in 1997. Kim Dae-jung exited the Democratic Party in the final year of his presidency, apologizing for graft cases involving his sons. Roh Moo-hyun left the ruling party in 2003. He returned to the newly assembled Uri Party the following year but detached himself generally from party affairs.
Entering the final year of his five-year term next week, President Lee may or may not decide to follow the footsteps of his predecessors, depending on how the party ― or more precisely Park Geun-hye’s emergency committee ― tries to dump all failures in governance on the president in the lead-up to the April elections. It is truly unfortunate that presidents have not been able to maintain harmonious relations with their parties because of their own faults or otherwise.
If we recall that presidents in the authoritarian period secured loyalty of politicians with money and coercive power, the virtual absence of leverage on the party in recent presidencies close to the end of their tenures is certainly evidence of democratic advancement. Yet, from the viewpoint of productive governance, the party-administration split is most undesirable. The ongoing dispute over the legislative steps for compensating depositors of bankrupt savings banks and controlling credit card fees are cases in point.
As for the New Frontier Party, it can hardly be a wise choice to seek to alienate the president and his administration. Whatever it does including generous welfare promises to the public will hardly be able to win over any significant number of voters already inclined to supporting the leftists. On the other hand, severing its ties with the president will rather be risking a loss of support from right-leaning voters who primarily want stability of government and believe in cooperation between the party and administration.
One year is not a short time at all. Lee has many economic and security tasks ahead, which need legislative support, preferably bipartisan. He is advised not to react to party moves emotionally but use his reason and discretion in steering the administration through this year of elections.
Observing all these less-than-reassuring political developments, we are once again obliged to point out the negative effect of the constitutionally fixed single-term presidency. Under this system, devised after leaving authoritarian rule to prevent presidents clinging on to power, the nation has witnessed its president becoming a lame duck for the fifth time in a row.
