DP still trying to get interior minister fired

Home > National > Politics

print dictionary print

DP still trying to get interior minister fired

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min presides over a meeting at the central government complex in Jongno District, central Seoul on Wednesday. [YONHAP]

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min presides over a meeting at the central government complex in Jongno District, central Seoul on Wednesday. [YONHAP]

 
The liberal Democratic Party is sticking to its original plan of demanding Interior Minister Lee Sang-min be dismissed instead of pursuing his impeachment — for now.
 
The DP filed a no-confidence motion against Lee on Nov. 30, but failed to get it on the floor last week as Speaker Kim Jin-pyo refused to convene a plenary session of the National Assembly and urged compromise with the conservative People Power Party (PPP).
 
The DP canvassed opinions from its lawmakers over which approach to take, party spokesman Lee Soo-jin said at a press briefing Wednesday, adding that the bill would be presented for a vote at a plenary session of the National Assembly on Thursday or Friday.
 
But Lee warned that impeachment was not completely off the table. 
 
“Unless the president takes the no-confidence motion seriously,” the party “will go so far as to introduce a bill for [Lee's] impeachment,” he said.
 
The no-confidence motion holds Lee responsible for inadequate public safety measures that led to the death of 158 people in a Halloween celebration in Itaewon in Yongsan District, central Seoul, and calls for his removal.  
 
The presidential office and the PPP have opposed calls for Lee’s dismissal, saying that the interior minister should not be held responsible for the tragedy while a special counsel probe established by the parliament and a criminal investigation of the tragedy by the police are ongoing.  
 
The DP spokesman pushed back against the PPP’s argument, saying “regardless of the no-confidence motion, the special counsel probe should be carried out thoroughly to respect the victims and their families.”
 
The PPP has signaled it could boycott the special counsel probe, which was established after bipartisan wrangling last month, if the DP railroads the co-confidence motion through the parliament.
 
The DP holds a supermajority of 169 seats in the 300-member National Assembly — more than one-third of lawmakers required to put the bill to a vote and one-half of lawmakers to pass it.
 
A no-confidence motion is legally non-binding, while impeachment would be subject to adjudication by the Constitutional Court.
 
If the DP ends up pursuing Lee’s impeachment, it would not be without risk to the party.
 
An impeachment bill by the DP would likely imperil ongoing negotiations between the DP and PPP over the government’s budget proposal, which the National Assembly failed to pass before the constitutionally mandated deadline of Dec. 2.
 
If the Constitutional Court were to dismiss an impeachment bill, it could strengthen the PPP’s argument that the DP manufactured a political crisis over the interior minister.
 
On Wednesday, PPP lawmaker Chang Je-won called on the DP to “stop engaging in a political show aimed at destabilizing the Yoon administration.”
 
Referring to the Seoul Western District Court refusal to grant police an arrest warrant against Lee Im-jae, former Yongsan police chief, Chang questioned the DP’s logic of demanding the interior minister take responsibility for the tragedy.
 
“If a court says that the evidence to implicate the chief authority at the scene [of the disaster] is lacking, is it reasonable to demand accountability from Interior Minister Lee and mention [his] impeachment?” Chang asked.
 

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]
Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)