[EDITORIALS]Justice not being served here

Prosecutors were barred by hundreds of Millennium Democrats from enforcing their warrant to detain Representative Hahn Hwa-kap, who allegedly received illegal funds during the party’s presidential primaries in 2002. Regardless of how the situation came to that state, the Millennium Democratic Party deserves criticism for hindering legitimate law enforcement.
But the prosecution’s investigation of the primary election funds is unfair, as we have already pointed out. The investigators are not looking into Roh Moo-hyun and Chung Dong-young, who ran their race to the end, but probing Mr. Hahn, who dropped out of the primaries in the middle. That triggered complaints that the investigations were unfair, politically motivated and meant to oppress the opposition party. That is also a reason why there should be an investigation to look into all of the MDP primary election funding.
We also want to hear from the prosecution why it waited three months after it heard some allegations involving Mr. Hahn during its probes on the SK Group in October. The prosecution explained that its probe of Mr. Hahn was delayed because it did not know from whom the Hahn camp had received the illegal money. It also said the probe was delayed because of other investigations of illegal funds and corruption.
The explanations, however, are unconvincing. The prosecution probed SK officials thoroughly last year, and it should not be that difficult to nail down who received the alleged illegal funds.
Of the Daewoo Engineering money that allegedly went to Ahn Hee-jeong, 50 million won ($44,800) was spent by the Roh camp in the primaries, prosecutors said. They said they would indict Mr. Ahn on those new charges later. The prosecution decided to call the winner to account for 50 million won, while calling the defeated to account for 1 billion won. Could it be true that the winner of the primaries spent only that small amount? The leadership of the prosecution repeated its basic position, “We will investigate further when allegations are revealed while probing businesses.” We doubt their willingness to do so.
It is not too late for the prosecution to begin an all-out investigation. That is the only way to end this debate over fairness.