MDP Wins First Vote in Assembly

The 16th National Assembly opened house on June 5 and voted the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP)'s eight time representative Lee Man-sup as Speaker. His term is for the next two years. For the vice-speaker positions, the Grand National Party (GNP)'s Hong Sa-duk and United Liberal Democrat(ULD)'s Kim Chong-ho were selected.

With all 273 members in attendence for the 212th extraordinary session's first full session, Lee earned 140 votes, or 51.2 percent of all votes, to defeat the GDP's candidate Seo Chung-won by eight votes.

Political insiders believe the ruling party won this first vote because of their ties with the ULD and the votes from the Democratic People's Party, New Korea Party of Hope and all the independents all went in favor of the MDP.

In the voting for vice speaker, Rep. Hong earned 238, or 87.8 percent, and Rep. Kim earned 187, or 69 percent, of the votes.

In his address, Chairman Lee said that he would put his conscience and political career on the line to be a fair and neutral speaker. Lee added that the 16th National Assembly needs to be a productive and democratic one.

Before the National Assembley held their meetings, MDP's floor leader Chung Kyun-whan and his GNP counterpart Chung Chang-hwa met and agreed not to have any railroading of revisions to National Assembly law. Currently, the MDP and ULD have jointly submited a revision to lower the size needed to be a negotation body from the current 20 seats to 10. The ruling and opposing parties will present a resolution on the Inter-Korea summit talks in the regular session on June 7 and have selected 11 representatives from three parties to make the rough draft.

by Lee Yang-soo