All for Lee Jae-myung’s sake

Ko Jung-ae
The author is the acting editor-in-chief of the JoongAng Sunday.

About 23 years ago, the reform-minded up-and-coming politicians of the Democratic Party (DP) demanded four reform actions, including the exclusion of non-official confidantes of the leader from state and policy affairs and the enhancement of democracy within the party. Then-president Kim Dae-jung resigned as head of the party. This was the tipping point in the DP for separating the party’s governance from its presidential bid, recalled former DP lawmaker Woo Sang-ho. This action ended the president’s dominance and the privatization of the party and buttressed the party system in democracy, according to his memoir.

But former President Kim’s recollection painted a different picture. He was unsatisfied with the party’s reform actions, and said that the idea of distancing himself from the party by resigning from the chair post was his own decision. Whatever the reason, the liberal front’s tradition of separating the party’s leadership from its presidential bid was officially scrapped. The DP went so far as to ditch the provision in the party charter, which calls for the removal of a person from the party office upon indictment on corruption charges.

Korean politics has been regressing, which is no news. But the speed and scope of the regression of democracy under mighty DP leader Lee Jae-myung is astounding.

The topics of dividing the role of heading the party and biding for presidency or removing the office of someone indicted on criminal charges are current issues within the DP. A five-term lawmaker representing Incheon who also served as Incheon mayor suddenly announced a bid for Seoul mayorship to help Lee Jae-myung to win his own legislative spot in Incheon. This bizarre event can be understood as being another episode of Korea’s theatre of the absurd. The DP’s disregard for the long-standing tradition of reserving the chairmanship of the National Assembly Steering Committee to the governing party, which has been in place since the 1987 Constitutional amendment, cannot be approved for jeopardizing a smooth operation of the legislature.

But the DP has gone too far by exploiting its majority power in the legislature to threaten the executive and judiciary branches. The party is out to remove all the stumbling blocks that can get in the way of Lee’s presidential bid following the guilty ruling on his former deputy Lee Hwa-young for arranging an illicit remittance of money to North Korea in return for favors. The DP has dominated the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and the Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee to interfere with investigations, trials and media coverage.

The party is threatening to sue prosecutors for calumny if they summon its members and is demanding that prosecutors visit detention centers for questioning suspects instead of summoning them to their office. They are intimidating judges and prosecutors with the motions of impeachment and campaigning to elect judges instead of leaving them to be appointed by the government.

The DP is pushing for a legal revision to ban a “targeted investigation” on a certain person. Since they believe that any charge on their boss is motivated as a “targeted investigation,” they are more or less demanding prosecutors to leave their boss alone. Lawyers-turned-politicians who represented Lee and his aides in the case related to Daejang-dong development scandal are leading the bill.

The DP unilaterally passed three bills related to public broadcasting at the Science, ICT, Broadcasting, and Communications Committee after bypassing the pre-review process at the subcommittee. The aim is to seat its side of people on the board of public broadcasters. The three bills were passed a day after media organizations slammed Lee for calling them “pets” of the prosecution.

Lee has risen to become a leader outsizing Kim Dae-jung in the DP over a short period of time. He has become a deity-like figure to defy the Constitution that bans any type of special elite class. Yet Lee is making an exception for himself and his surrogates.

All persons must be equal under the law. Some people act as if they are above others. Lee is one of them.