The ruling and opposition parties remain deadlocked over the formation of the second-half National Assembly, while also trading blame over who should control the special prosecutor process targeting the National Election Commission over a ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections.
People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik said Tuesday at a floor strategy meeting that if the Democratic Party of Korea was determined to take all 18 standing committees, it should go ahead — but only after first amending the Assembly Act on its own to enshrine the rule that the largest floor party monopolizes all 18 committee chairmanships.
"Then the PPP will join the standing committees," Jeong said, adding that the Democratic Party should stop disguising what amounts to threats and meaningless stalling as genuine negotiations.
On the special prosecutor for the National Election Commission, Jeong held firm on having the opposition recommend the appointee. He argued that the primary investigation target in the probe into the June 3 violation of citizens' voting rights was Wi Cheol-hwan — the acting NEC chair whom President Lee Jae-myung had appointed as a commissioner and whom Jeong described as "the president's dining companion." The secondary target, he said, was the Lee administration's Ministry of Interior and Safety, which had effectively abandoned its election support duties. "Rather than mechanical neutrality through a third-party recommendation, we must rigorously investigate the cartel between the NEC and the Democratic Party through an opposition-recommended special prosecutor," Jeong said.
Han Byung-do, the Democratic Party's acting leader and floor leader, pushed back at his own floor strategy meeting Tuesday, saying the PPP had chosen at its Monday caucus to continue its Assembly boycott — which he called "the worst legislative walkout against the people's livelihoods in constitutional history."
Han urged the PPP to fulfill its minimum responsibilities as a political party, saying the people's lives must come before insults and political feuding. He warned that if the PPP continued its "groundless boycott," the Democratic Party would ask the Assembly speaker to convene a plenary session this week and take action to keep the legislature working.
Addressing a hearing held Tuesday by the special committee on a parliamentary investigation into the NEC, Han said the Assembly must first return to normal if voting rights are to be protected. "The Democratic Party will use the hearing to lay bare every detail of the infringement on citizens' voting rights, leaving no question unanswered," he said. "Yet the PPP keeps calling for the protection of voting rights while simultaneously bringing the Assembly to a halt."
Han added that the PPP was continuing its boycott while refusing to cooperate even on the special prosecutor act it had been demanding daily, let alone on livelihood legislation. "If the real goal is to uncover the truth, stop shouting slogans outside and come back to the Assembly to work together on passing the special prosecutor act and reforming the NEC," he said.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
