[Letters] Populist promises

Regarding your April 15 editorial [“A season for absurd promises”], I would like to say that we desperately need stronger and more pragmatic measures to make the candidates’ promises practical and concrete right now. The most urgent reason we have to prevent the politicians from showing absurd promises is that they cause people’s interest to continuously turn away from politics. This political apathy leads the candidates to make their promises more ridiculous, following populism. That’s why we should break off this vicious circle.

In order to get rid of the populism that makes their promises unrealistic, we need to set up a legal device to evaluate how well the candidates have kept their promises during their term of office. For this evaluation, a kind of governmental organization which has nothing to do with political parties should be established and given the right to release the results. Based on these results, people will judge whether they will choose candidates from the same party for the next election.

Baek Eun-jeong, high school teacher in Suwon