hankyoreh

A referendum on a Seoul Metropolitan Council ordinance for universal free school lunches is becoming murkier and murkier as time passes. A signature examination and receipt of formal objections by the City between July 4 and 10 showed more than 130 thousand objections received from a total of 805 people. Allegations were raised that false signatures, including those using other people’s names, accounted for a full 17 percent of the 800 thousand or so signatures. Even amid all of this, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has openly declared his plans to make political use of the free school lunch referendum.
Ignoring the presence of some 130 thousand signatures suspected of being fraudulent, the city of Seoul reportedly plans to move for the referendum around July 25 to 30 and carry it out in late August. Its reasoning is that it met the conditions for raising the motion, namely the signatures of 5 percent of Seoul’s 8.36 million residents. But even the flaws that have come to light already are not matters that can simply be overlooked. By losing its procedural legitimacy at the presentation stage, the referendum could give rise not only to administrative waste but also serious political side effects. Outrageously, the names on the signature register suspected of being fraudulent are said to include those of Democratic Party-affiliated district council members in Seoul, as well as civic organization activists who have spent over a decade fighting for free school meals.
The procedural problems with the referendum do not end with forged signatures. Observers have repeatedly contended that the government voting campaign is being carried out at Oh’s direction. The current Residents’ Voting Act forbids all acts of prior campaigning for all government employees with the exception of local assembly members, and especially acts of inducing support or opposition to items submitted for referendum voting. Yet Oh has been openly engaged in preliminary election campaigning since the day after the referendum request signatures were received, declaring, “We are standing at a historical crossroads of determining whether to increase free welfare service populism or put an end to it.”
Yesterday, he attended a steering committee meeting of the Grand National Party’s (GNP) Seoul office, where he said, “If we win in the referendum, it will help in establishing a far more beneficial environment for the general and presidential elections.” Oh has even declared his intent to use the referendum for election engineering.
It is also questionable whether a referendum on free school meals fits with the purpose of the referendum system. The system was introduced to supplement representative democracy, and its use with cases like this one creates confusion in national governance. What happens if a president decides to submit a budget plan reviewed and approved by the National Assembly for a referendum just because he or she does not like it? It is time for an immediate stop to the “Oh Se-hoon referendum,” which lacks both justification and procedural legitimacy.
　　
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