[editorial] A Coalition of Inconvenience?

It has been exactly three years since the United Liberal Democrats entered into an alliance with the National Congress for New Politics, the predecessor of the Millennium Democratic Party, on a shared platform that included revision of the constitution to introduce a parliamentary-style government. President Kim Dae-jung, whose election owed a lot to the alliance, has been paying his dues by including the ULD in the joint government. What then, are the results of nearly three years of joint government? It is our view that more has been lost than gained in this coalition.

There were expectations that a coalition between two parties with different regional backgrounds and political inclinations might lead to greater harmony between progressive and conservative forces and the weakening of regional conflicts. These expectations were perhaps misplaced. There is, of course, no guarantee that a marriage between a genius and a beauty will produce a superbaby. Since the alliance was really formed on the basis of tactical maneuvering, it was never likely to produce a government that would meet the needs of the people.

The coalition has put three major obstacles in the way of domestic politics. The first has been the paralysis of politics. The results of the last general election, which gave more seats to the Grand National Party than to the governing party, reflected voters' desire for Korean politics to rely more on conversation, persuasion, concession and negotiation. The ruling party, on the contrary, has been bent on winning the cooperation of the United Liberal Democrats to overcome its numerical inferiority, resulting in an all-out confrontation with the opposition.

The second hinderance caused by the coalition has been in the area of reform. The cabinet is supposed to drive the reform process, but a cabinet composed of people of varying political inclinations cannot achieve the kind of coherence that is needed for extensive reforms. Since most of the seats in the cabinet are awarded to politicians from the two parties on the basis of political considerations, few seats are left over for competent persons.

Most outstanding is the problem with the position of prime minister. Occupied by the president of the ULD, the post does not seem to have any function other than that of holding the two parties together.

The third, and the most serious, problem is the public's distrust of politics in general. The two parties' joint platform of 1997 was a formal commitment to the public. It is not that the two parties should not revoke this commitment under any circumstances, but they should make it clear whether its execution has been postponed or abandoned altogether, and make appropriate apologies to the public in either case. But all that the public has so far been given is the statement made last year by Kim Jong-pil, then the prime minister, that he was willing to accept the postponement of the introduction of parliamentary-style government. Some time later, when the MDP was founded, it omitted from its platform, without any explanation, the clause regarding the introduction of parliamentary-style government, which had been part of the platform of the former National Congress for New Politics. Breaking a promise in such a shameless way, whose trust could they possibly hope to win, let alone keep?

It is our opinion that a sizable part of the on-going crisis of government also derives from the problems of the coalition, which has been kept alive for the partisan interests of the two parties. It is time for the two parties to review the three years of their coalition and decide how much life it has left.