[Yu Kun-ha] Soaring expectations for prime minister nominee

In a surprise reshuffle, President Park Geun-hye has nominated former Supreme Court justice Ahn Dae-hee as her new prime minister. At the same time, she has sacked her two trusted but increasingly unpopular aides: National Security Council chief Kim Jang-soo and National Intelligence Service Director Nam Jae-joon.

Ahn’s nomination, which is subject to parliamentary confirmation, shows 

Park’s determination to tackle the problems of the civil service exposed through the Sewol ferry fiasco. Her acceptance of the resignations of Kim and Nam reflects her desperate efforts to win over the public.

Announcing the reshuffle Thursday, the presidential spokesman said Park nominated Ahn “to eliminate abnormal practices in our society and accumulated evils in the bureaucracy.”

When it comes to fighting irregularities and corruption, few are better qualified than Ahn, who made his name as a competent and tough-minded prosecutor before becoming a justice of the top court.

Ahn, 59, won fame in 2003 by leading a high-profile investigation into political parties for collecting huge amounts of illegal funds for the 2002 presidential election.

The probe dealt a devastating blow to the then main opposition Grand National Party ― the predecessor of the ruling Saenuri Party ― by bringing to light its collection of a truckload of cash from chaebol groups.

Ahn indicted not just heavyweights of the ruling and opposition parties but also close aides to President Roh Moo-hyun. He also charged several chaebol chairmen with raising slush funds and offering them to political parties.

His thorough, no-holds-barred investigation won strong support from the public and earned him the nickname of “the people’s prosecutor.”

After his nomination, Ahn recalled that fighting corruption had been his main job throughout his 26-year-long career in prosecution. Then he pledged to devote himself to reforming the civil service by clearing it of corruption.

Ahn’s crusade against corruption is likely to get a big boost from the National Assembly as lawmakers are set to pass the so-called Kim Young-ran bill, a proposal aimed at curbing corruption among public officials.

The bill was submitted to the Assembly about 10 months ago but has since been collecting dust. It gained urgency following the ferry debacle.

If the bill is enacted as originally proposed by Kim Young-ran, a former head of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, civil servants who are found to have received 1 million won ($900) or more will be put in jail for up to three years ― regardless of the reason.

Ahn’s nomination, combined with the likely enactment of the tough anticorruption bill, raises expectations that corruption in the nation’s civil service will begin to decline gradually, if not totally disappear.

Yet curbing corruption among public officials is only the first step toward reforming the civil service. The ultimate goal is to make public officials more competent, professional and committed to fulfilling their public duties.

This task, however, would be a mission impossible for a prime minister who is only allowed, as is now, to carry out largely ceremonial functions. Ahn is well aware of the position’s limited power under the current arrangement as he studied it less than two years ago.

After his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2012, Ahn was requested by Park to join her presidential campaign. As head of the political reform committee of the ruling Saenuri Party, he formulated a reform package, which Park included in her campaign manifesto.

One of Ahn’s key proposals was to reduce the power of the president to address the harm caused by the “imperial presidency,” or an excessive centralization of executive power in the hands of the president.

As a remedy, he put forward the concept of a “responsible prime minister,” one who exercises power as stipulated in the Constitution and takes responsibility accordingly.

Under the Constitution, the president is supposed to appoint ministers on the recommendation of the prime minister. The Constitution also empowers the prime minister to recommend to the president the removal of members of the Cabinet from office.

On the campaign trail, Park promised that if she became the president, she would embrace Ahn’s concept and enhance the role of the prime minister. But she did not keep her pledge. In forming her inaugural Cabinet, she did not allow outgoing Prime Minister Chung Hong-won to make recommendations for ministerial appointments.

In fact, Ahn was not the first to propose the concept of an empowered prime minister. Neither was Park the first to promise to adopt the idea during the campaign period and forget it after being elected.

Whether Park will allow Ahn to exercise his constitutional power remains to be seen. Yet her selection of a man who proposed to curtail the presidential power suggests that she is probably prepared to share power with him to some degree.

In fact, Park has already taken steps to empower the prime minister. She proposed to place the envisioned Ministry of National Safety under the Prime Minister’s Office instead of the Presidential Office. The new agency will assume responsibility for managing natural and manmade disasters.

More importantly, she has also decided to put the Ministry of Administrative Reform under the prime minister’s control. This ministry will take over the jurisdiction on matters related to the civil service from the Ministry of Security and Public Administration. This will enable it to spearhead the government’s efforts to reform the civil service.

The two new ministries, if established as planned, would alone significantly expand the prime minister’s power. But Ahn would still find himself hard pressed to play the role of a responsible prime minister if Park maintains her micromanaging leadership style.

Park has been criticized for dictating detailed tasks to ministers and intervening in their personnel affairs. To help Ahn carry out civil service reforms, Park will have to change her governing style.

In this regard, she is under pressure to replace her chief of staff, Kim Ki-choon, who is often called the power behind the throne and is suspected of helping Park micromanage ministerial affairs.

Kim, 75, wields significant influence over the Cabinet, as most ministers are many years his junior in terms of both age and bureaucratic career. Ahn is no exception. When Kim served as the minister of justice in 1992, Ahn was a section chief at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, which was under the minister’s control.

In Korea, one can hardly ignore the influence of a man who was once their boss. Park needs to heed this point when she reorganizes her secretariat.

By Yu Kun-ha

Yu Kun-ha is chief editorial writer of The Korea Herald. He can be reached at khyu@heraldcorp.com. ― Ed.