Provisions To Rein In Local Units Considered

The government and the ruling party are pursuing amendments to the law on local governments. They are considering term limits for municipal officials, introducing referendum provisions and strengthening the rights and responsibilities of vice heads of local governments.

The Ministry of Government Ad-ministration and Home Affairs an-nounced Friday: "The ruling party plans to amend the law on local government, negotiate it with the opposition party, present it before the National Assembly and pass it within this year."

"If heads of local governments work for three consecutive terms of four years each," a high government official said, "a lot of negative side effects such as discriminatory distribution of the budget and the formation of personal networks may develop. Therefore, the system must be improved."

He added, however, that because local elections will be held next year, it would be unreasonable to begin the term-limit provision immediately. "We plan to apply the ban beginning with the 2006 elections," he said.

The party plans to have the local councils endorse the appointment of vice heads and to extend their rights and responsibilities to setting the budget, procurement and contracts, and authorization of paper work. The reasoning behind these measures is that it has been found difficult to block despotism among heads of local governments when they are allowed to appoint their own vice heads.

The party is also reviewing the introduction of the referendum to enable citizens to directly participate in decision-making on local government issues. It is working out details such as procedures, effects and requisites and the types of issues to be put to referendum.

The party is also considering increasing the number of representatives from each constituency in municipal and local councils from the present one representative to two.

by Ko Dae-hoon