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Minjoo Party lawmakers chant slogans calling for the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye

The opposition is questioning the political motives of the Saenuri Party’s new platform, arguing its calls for President Park Geun-hye’s resignation in April and an early presidential election in June are actually a strategy to keep the party in power.

Speaking at a supreme council meeting on Dec. 2, Minjoo Party leader Choo Mi-ae called the April resignation scenario “a way of letting the President off the hook” and said, “Its final destination ties in with a strategy of getting another conservative administration elected.”

“The President has already carried out appointments for the police managing assemblies and demonstrations, and with her prosecutor general appointments next month she is going to try to bring the prosecutors targeting her in line and use the ‘premium’ of her office to get out of the special prosecutor’s investigation that is set to extend through April,” Choo added.

In response, the Saenuri Party maintained Park could retreat to a secondary role if a National Assembly-recommended Prime Minister is assigned all authority and a neutral national Cabinet is formed.

“All Saenuri Party lawmakers must be ready to resign their seats if the President does not abide by the National Assembly’s decision,” said floor leader Chung Jin-suk as a signal of the party’s commitment.

Members of the Saenuri Party’s non-Park wing, who currently hold the deciding votes for an impeachment motion, also said they wanted a schedule for Park’s departure and an announcement from her that she plans to entrust all governance duties to a prime Minister and retreat to a clear secondary role.

But the Blue House previously dismissed a secondary role scenario in the early stages of the scandal involving Park and confidante Choi Sun-sil, insisting it could not “depart from the Constitutional framework” and abandon its roles in both domestic and international politics. In legal terms, there is nothing to stop Park from wielding power at any time before she resigns unless she is officially suspended from her duties.

While the Saenuri Party has claimed the reason five months are needed before Park steps down is because of “providing sufficient time to prepare for a presidential election,” the opposition has countered that even an impeachment procedure would also take several months, leaving time for politicians to prepare for an election just as an April resignation scenario would. The Saenuri Party’s response has been to say a voluntary resignation by Park would be “a more stable road map.”

“If [Park] is impeached, the National Assembly is going to be looking toward the Constitutional Court without offering any organized schedule to the public,” said Chung Jin-suk.

But while impeachment is an official procedure for a President’s departure as specified by the Constitution, no legally prescribed procedures exist for a “secondary role” or neutral Cabinet - a blind spot with potential to exacerbate confusion over the respective authority of the President and Prime Minister.

The opposition is viewing the Saenuri Party’s attempts to avoid an impeachment as motivated by concerns that it could lose power if an election is held when the President is being put on trial. The Saenuri Party’s position is that by avoiding an impeachment and forming a neutral Cabinet, it could potentially turn things around by leaving more room for Constitutional amendment negotiations to reconfigure the power structure. Indeed, a proposal made by senior political and social figures on Nov. 7 - which the party said it plans to adopt as a “standard” for resolving the current governance situation - includes calls for amending the Constitution. The party sees the possibility of turning the tide and rallying conservative supporters if the election is seen as shifting toward a “conservatives vs. progressives” contest. Some insiders from the party are already saying a scenario in which it holds on to power next June is not out of the question.

By Lee Kyung-mi and Lee Se-young, staff reporters

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