[EDITORIALS]Obstinacy is no solution

An interview he had recently with an evening newspaper shows that President Roh Moo-hyun and the general public do not share the same sense of reality. How could a government that has called itself the “participatory government” and emphasized the importance of heeding public opinion be so ignorant of the people’s mind? Although the nation’s economy has not recovered because of the uncertainties of the country’s political future, the president insists on dragging on with important political issues, such as the vote of confidence. It is rather doubtful that the president is really worrying about the future of the country.
President Roh argues that the vote of confidence will not be a burden to the economy. Mr. Roh seems to think that the vote of confidence is a big political card for him. So he intends to drag it out to the maximum without deciding whether to go ahead or not. Such a political calculation makes the nation uneasy. The Constitutional Court has in effect said that the vote of confidence proposed by Mr. Roh is unconstitutional. And it is also not justifiable to delay the timing of the decision to join Our Open Party on various reasons. It is proper to clarify his political identity and let himself be judged by the people in the legislative election next year.
The president said that one should judge politicians by their political acts and not by how morally clean they are. Regarding the investigation of prosecutors into his close aides, Mr. Roh said, “If they were not close to me, they would not have trouble. As they suffer because of me, my heart aches.” Why, then, did he make such a strong outcry against the corruption of other parties? Is it that it is a political act when it is done by me and it is immoral when it is done by others? Our society gets confused because the president sees things with such double standards. It seems that Mr. Roh vetoed the independent counsel bill because his understanding of the wrongdoings of his close aides was such.
We ask the president to heed public opinion with a more open mind. It is most urgent that we deal with the uncertainties of the nation’s politics and stabilize the country.