[EDITORIALS]Roh’s woeful letter

President Roh wrote a letter before he left the country for state visits abroad on Sunday, and the letter, made public on the Blue House Web site on Monday, put the Uri Party in an uproar. Mr. Roh wrote that the reason he had failed in his administration was because opposition parties were uncooperative. Mr. Roh also said that he is against the idea of the Uri Party forming a new party in alliance with other political forces. Mr. Roh was telling the party to open a general convention if it wants to seek a new party.
The Uri Party may split into several groups; some legislators may bolt away from the party, and maybe Mr. Roh will resign from party membership. However, none of these things have anything to do with the lives of the public. If party members don’t like each other, they may simply separate from each other. But they’re not doing that because they don’t want to lose the party assets, its political fund or the 23 National Assembly seats given to the Uri Party in the proportional representation system. This is just simply ridiculous. If Uri failed to properly run its administration, they should at least keep quiet in order to not be an obstacle.
Mr. Roh made the governing party into a scene of pandemonium amid the National Assembly’s regular session and now he’s blaming the opposition parties for not properly dealing with the budget bill and other pending bills. Mr. Roh complained that he could not conduct his personnel rights, but just look at President George W. Bush. Mr. Bush replaced Donald Rumsfeld in the secretary of defense post after his party’s defeat in the mid-term election. Recently, Mr. Bush also withdrew the appointment of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Roh said that politicians under the former President Kim Young-sam were concerned only about the next presidential election, which brought financial crisis to the country. However, what is important here is not the politicians, but the president. In order to avoid such a national crisis, the president himself must concentrate on administration, not politics, first.
Sources say that it took one week for Mr. Roh to write the letter. This means that Mr. Roh was concerned only about party politics although his visits abroad were close at hand. If Mr. Roh did not pay much attention to the visits, what is the point of going out in the first place, simply using up an immense budget? Judging from the outcome of this administration, stabilizing the administration and management of fair elections don’t seem to be an easy task.