Shame on the first-term lawmakers

Amid heated internal battles in both the governing People Power Party (PPP) and the majority Democratic Party (DP) ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election on April 10, the behavior of both parties’ first-term lawmakers is dumbfounding. The phenomenon is particularly serious in the PPP. Before electing Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, who is loyal to President Yoon Suk Yeol, as their new leader in the last convention in March, the first-term lawmakers methodically pressured their former floor leader Na Kyung-won not to run for the new leadership, to show their support for Kim.

At that time, 80 percent of the novice politicians in the PPP endorsed the idea of dissuading Na from running in the race. They even encouraged one another to sign a covert letter if they really didn’t want to get nominated for the next parliamentary election. The farce is being replayed. The first-term legislators are now attacking party heavyweights for demanding that Kim resign after taking responsibility for the PPP’s recent defeat in a Seoul by-election. The collective action is led by the lawmakers who had urged Na to not run in the race for the chairmanship.

But after Kim’s stepdown, they are keeping mum since the president was reportedly enraged by Kim for trying to choose between resignation and nomination for the upcoming election. They had enthusiastically cheered for Kim, but got lost now. Actually, most of them can easily win in their constituencies in South and North Gyeongsang, the home grounds for the conservatives. Even young members of the Supreme Council have started to demand the recruitment of Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon as head of an emergency committee.

First-term lawmakers of the DP are no different. After a group of hard-liners in the party took the lead in passing many controversial bills, they are now collecting signatures from party members to demand their former leader Lee Nak-yon stop trying to create his own party after being disappointed by the tyranny of current party leader Lee Jae-myung. The lawmakers have been doing their best to shield Lee from a plethora of his own judicial risks. If they are really fresh politicians, why are they keeping silent on Lee’s aberrant ways of managing the party?

In the past, first-term lawmakers — such as Nam Kyung-pil and Won Hee-ryong from the PPP and Chun Jung-bae and Shin Ki-nam from the DP — championed reforms of their own party. If they are really new blood, the first-term lawmakers of the two parties today must follow their footsteps instead of taking opportunistic actions. If they behave like the Red Guard of the powers that be, they can never contribute to advancing our outmoded political culture. The voters must drop them in the next election.