Two weeks are left until the referendum on free school lunch in Seoul. The capital city will now be engulfed in raging campaigns that will force every resident to define their ideological orientation in the heated contest between the left and right.
The referendum is a costly affair; citizens feel sorry about the expenditure of 18 billion won which could otherwise be used to take care of the tens of thousands of supportless senior citizens and the hordes of homeless. It resulted from a failure of representative democracy ― the inability of Mayor Oh Se-hoon and the opposition-dominated city council to settle the issue through concession and compromise.
The extremely confrontational politics that have unfolded in the capital city since the June 2 local elections last year put the opposing forces on a collision course. There will now be no win-win solution, nor the ideal of checks and balances in city government. Instead, a lasting antagonism between the winners and losers will result no matter what the result of the Aug. 24 vote.
Citizens will now be asked to choose one of two proposals. One is providing free school lunches for children from families of the bottom half of incomes by 2014, and the other is giving free lunches to all elementary school children from this year and to all middle school students from 2012. There is no room for a third way.
Oh defines the vote as making a decision between “sustainable welfare” and unrealistic “welfare populism.” His opponents, the five opposition parties and liberal civic groups rallying around the Seoul City Council which had passed an edict last year to offer free lunches at all primary and middle schools, denounce the referendum itself as a totally unnecessary political gambit. They are campaigning for a boycott to keep the turnout below 33 percent and thus invalidate the vote.
The election management committee is in a dilemma. Trying to fulfill their usual mission of encouraging vote participation could be helping the mayor and his conservative supporters. They have to limit their business to informing citizens of the voting schedule and ensuring the opposing forces do not go out of bounds in their campaigning.
However the vote may be legally managed, it has already lost the characteristic of an event to settle a local issue; the referendum has turned out to be a proxy war between the left and right. The ruling Grand National Party, which had initially been cautious about direct involvement, has come forward to support Oh. The five opposition parties find the event as an opportunity to foment solidarity ahead of elections next year.
Oh is risking his political future as a presidential contender in the ruling party. But he has refused to stake his mayoral chair on the outcome of the referendum. Regardless of the result of the vote, he vows to continue to fight against the liberal city council making what he calls its indiscriminate welfare offensives from the left. It could be a safer but less resolute a stand in promoting his cause and gathering votes.
The unprecedented referendum in the capital city, the center of the nation’s political, economic, cultural and educational activities, is bringing a hard problem to the many good citizens who want their life to be detached from partisan and ideological struggles. They are aware of the huge hundreds of billion won needed to give free lunches to all students but they think of the psychological impact on young students from poorer homes when the benefit is offered selectively.
They hope for maximum welfare with maximum affordable budget from taxes they pay. They believe that there can be the right level of welfare regarding school meals, child care, tuition support and medical aid commensurate with the nation’s economic potential if parties adjust their respective demands. Now that they are asked to pick up one of the two options on Aug. 24, they are not happy to do so.
Despite all these questions, citizens are recommended to take time on that Wednesday to go to the polls and express their opinion, just to keep the democratic system alive, if nothing else.
