hankyoreh

Dec. 9. (Photo by Park Jong-shik)

By Song Ho-jin　

The Grand National Party’s decision to ignore parliamentary debate procedures and railroad bills directly connected with the environment, education and the people’s livelihood in the 2011 budget has led to rising criticism that the Lee Myung-bak government’s unilateral style of national management is reaching an extreme.

In removing the outside layer of violence on the floor and taking a closer examination, the core of the issue is the extent to which democratic procedures became powerless as the ruling party raced to pass the legislation.

Of the non-budget related bills Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae directly put on the floor the previous day, the passing of the bill to deploy troops to the UAE was an exceptional example of passing an overseas deployment bill without parliamentary discussion. The 1965 bill to send troops to Vietnam passed after heated debate between the ruling and opposition parties, and the bill to send troops to Iraq during the Roh Moo-hyun administration was passed after discussion was held within the GNP, which was then in the opposition, and the ruling Uri Party. The bill to send troops to the UAE, which has been criticized as selling the military to sweeten the deal to build nuclear reactors in the country, was only submitted to the assembly’s National Defense Committee on Nov 16, but no discussions were held over the matter.　

Democratic Party Lawmaker Seo Jong-pyo, a former four-star general, said during a high-ranking party policy committee meeting Thursday, “It is impermissible to directly table an overseas deployment-related bill.”

A ruling party member who voted against the bill said, “The direct tabling of the bill despite the suspicions that the deployment is some sort of payment ignored both the National Assembly and the people.”

The special law on the use of hydrophilic zones, which has sparked concerns of reckless development near the four major rivers, was also a bill that had not been tabled in the assembly‘s Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Committee and over which debate had not taken place. The GNP, however, on Tuesday night locked the committee room and passed the bill on its own, and not even a day later voted on it on the National Assembly floor. The bill could be called the “the Four Rivers Completion Bill.” If the Four Rivers project calls for the creation of ecological parks and bike paths next to the rivers after creating big “water bowls” through major dams and embankments on the main bodies of the rivers, the hydrophilic zone law defines the area within a 2km radius of the Four Rivers as a hydrophilic zone and calls for the development of residential, tourism and commercial facilities. Opposition lawmakers said the GNP’s passing of the law using stratagems is a self-acknowledgement that the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project is really a project to develop the Four Rivers area.

The bill to incorporate Seoul National University, too, which has been criticized for damaging the public nature of national universities and raising tuitions, had not been submitted to the assembly’s Education, Science and Technology Committee. This time, the government passed the original law just a day after it negotiated with a modified bill that reflected some of the Democratic Party’s demands.

The Basic Law on Science and Technology, which would create a new National Science and Technology Committee, was submitted by the government to the National Assembly on Nov. 30 and went before the Education, Science and Technology Committee on Dec. 1, but it had not been tabled. This was because of the National Assembly Law, which calls for a bill to be tabled 15 days after it is submitted to committee in order to give lawmakers time to study it. The ruling party, however, railroaded it in just eight days.

Opposition lawmakers are calling it the most exception act of legislative violence in the history of the constitutional order, with the Lee Myung-bak administration ignoring both negotiations with the people and discussion within the National Assembly. They have declared a hardline response, agreeing to push for an emergency parliament with civil society.

Democratic Party floor leader Park Jie-won convened a demonstration with national university professors on the National Assembly steps to condemn the railroading of the bills.

Park said, “President Lee’s dictatorship ignores the National Assembly, while his puppet, Assembly Speaker Park, is ignoring the people, and the Democratic Party will struggle to the end together with opposition parties.”

The Democratic Party has decided to submit bills to abolish each of the railroaded bills in order to reverse the situation from the very beginning.

Woo Hee-jong, chairman of the National Assembly of Professors for Democratic Society, said, “The GNP is just like a gang of self-blackmailers, sparking parliamentary violence and drawing public opinion to it while in the background secretly benefiting from it.” Woo went on to say, “The people should know what was behind the violence in the National Assembly.”

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