A long overdue passage of the arrest warrant

The National Assembly has finally passed the motion to endorse the prosecution’s request for an arrest warrant for Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung facing multiple charges against him. In the vote on Thursday, 149 lawmakers voted for his arrest, 136 voted against, six abstained, and four votes were ineffective.That means at least 29 lawmakers from the DP have approved the motion against their boss.

Apparently, they could no longer resist the growing public demand that the majority party — which holds 168 seats in the 300-member National Assembly — choose between a genuinely public party and an exclusively private party engrossed in safeguarding their problematic leader no matter what. We welcome their compliance, albeit belated, with the growing public call for justice.

However, it is regrettable that a majority of the DP — or 136 out of its 168 legislators — still opposed Lee’s arrest, as the motion was barely endorsed by a margin of just one vote. These are the lawmakers who were bent on protecting their leader, or more precisely, who adhered to lawmakers’ privilege of not being arrested while legislative sessions are underway. Most of them are members of the pro-Lee faction in the DP, who volunteered to invite the sarcastic name of the “bulletproof party” against their own criminals.

The lawmakers had endorsed a motion to arrest Rep. Ha Young-je, a People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker suspected of having received illegal money from a candidate in local elections in return for nominating him. That’s why the DP has been ridiculed as a party lenient toward its members but harsh against opponents. The time has come for the party to apologize for its abuse of the “no arrest immunity” and take a path toward the politics of common sense and justice.

In a speech at the National Assembly in June, Lee proudly pledged to give up the prerogative of no arrest. But a day before the vote on his fate, he desperately requested his peers vote down the motion. That inflicted an irrevocable damage on the DP, whose stigma as the shameful emblem of about-turns whenever possible will continue to torment it.

After the motion passed, lawmakers not loyal to Lee will increasingly demand that he step down as head of the party while his allies will counter their call vehemently. That spells a dark future for the majority party with less than seven months left before the next parliamentary elections on April 10.

The DP has only one choice left. The never-seen-before opposition leader must humbly accept the passage of the motion and appear before the judge to clear all the suspicions. Otherwise, the party and the unprecedented party leader will pay a price for its perennial off-track politics in the next election. Lee must make a bold decision to resign as the leader of the mammoth party before it’s too late.