hankyoreh

“Inevitable” 29.2 percent

By Ahn Chang-hyun, Staff Writer

An opinion survey conducted by the Korea Society Opinion Institute (KSOI) at the behest of the Hankyoreh showed a full 59.7 percent of respondents believe the Grand National Party’s (GNP) railroading of the 2011 budget on Dec. 8 was “wrong.” Among respondents in their 20s and 30s, 73 to 74 percent gave this opinion, while 29.2 percent called it “inevitable” and 11.1 percent said they were not sure.

Regarding the GNP’s decision to pass a motion to deploy soldiers to the United Arab Emirates and legislation to allocate funding for the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project along with the budget without subjecting the items to review, 60.8 percent said that this was “wrong.” Seventy percent of those in their 20s to 40s answered that this was “wrong,” compared to only 31.5 percent among those sixty and older.

In response to a question about who was responsible for the violence that erupted between ruling and opposition parties during the legislation’s passage, more than half, 50.2 percent, said that the ruling party bore greater responsibility. In comparison, 32.6 percent said the responsibility lay with the opposition, and 17.3 percent said they were not sure.

While the GNP and Lee Myung-bak administration offered the rationale that the budget needed to be passed within the regular session of the National Assembly, the study showed South Koreans placing more importance on the budget being passed through bipartisan agreement. While only 31.1 percent of respondents agreed that “it is important to pass [the budget] within the regular session, even if there is no bipartisan consensus,” the remaining 60.9 percent agreed that “it is important to pass [the budget] with a bipartisan consensus, even if it is not passed within the regular session.”

When asked to cite the most serious problem encountered during the passage of the budget, some 36.1 percent of respondents said “powerful lawmakers arranging money for their own constituencies,” nearly the same proportion as the 36.6 percent who answered “the railroading by the majority party.”

The survey, which took place on Dec. 11, questioned 1,036 adults of both sexes nationwide through an automated response telephone format. The results had a 95 percent confidence level with a maximum allowable error of ±3.1 percentage points.

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