Oh urges President Lee to veto 'fabricated indictment' special prosecutor act: 'Last chance'

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon urged President Lee Jae Myung on Friday to veto the so-called "fabricated indictment" special prosecutor act, calling it a gravely flawed measure that would upend the judicial system for the sake of a single person.

Oh wrote on SNS that the special prosecutor act was "on the verge of a Cabinet vote" and that it represented an attempt to "cross a line that should never be crossed — solely to drop the charges against one president."

Oh said Lee had also nominated a close aide from the Seongnam circle as justice minister candidate, calling the move tantamount to "installing an enforcer for the president's charge dismissal at the head of the Justice Ministry." He went on to say that the ministry risked being reduced from a state institution upholding the rule of law to "a dedicated agency managing the president's personal legal risk."

Oh said the public was appalled, questioning whether what was unfolding before their eyes was even possible in a 21st-century democratic republic. "Shaking the judicial system, mobilizing investigative agencies and ultimately privatizing the Justice Ministry for the sake of one person — this is the kind of thing you would only expect in the worst dictatorships," he said.

Oh then turned to Lee's silence. "Yet Lee Jae Myung, the very person at the center of all this, has not said a single word," he said, adding that even as the nation was fracturing over the dismissal of one president's charges, Lee was "maintaining silence as if none of it had anything to do with him."

Oh said there were reports that next week's Cabinet meeting — where the act would be promulgated — could be chaired by the prime minister rather than the president. "After watching the Democratic Party's reckless rampage all this time, pushing the prime minister to the front at the very last moment is an act of cowardice," he said. He added that if Lee found it so shameful to personally gavel through a bill designed to drop his own charges, "he should have stopped all of this from happening in the first place."

Oh closed by calling on Lee to act. "President Lee Jae Myung must veto the fabricated indictment special prosecutor act now. This is the last chance the people are giving the president," he said. "If he refuses even that, the day will be recorded as the beginning of an irreversible public judgment against the Lee Jae Myung administration."