Rival parties hit for undermining justice system
The rival parties have reached a compromise over the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK)'s push for prosecutorial reform, averting a further confrontation over the contentious issue. On Friday, the DPK and the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) signed a deal to accept a compromise proposal made by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug.
It is somewhat fortunate that both sides have broken the political deadlock through dialogue and compromise. The DPK has managed to defuse criticism for its unilateral bid to deprive the prosecution of investigative powers. The PPP, for its part, could afford to block the DPK, which dominates the 300-member Assembly with 172 seats, from ramming through the bills. This is raising hopes that the rival parties can move toward bipartisanship, especially when President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is seeking to form cooperative ties with the DPK.
Nevertheless, both parties are under fire for compromising the justice system for political purposes. The DPK appears to have won what it wanted: It can prevent the prosecution from digging the dirt on the outgoing Moon Jae-in administration by eventually stripping the law enforcement agency of investigative powers.
The deal only calls for a temporary delay in turning the prosecution into a toothless tiger with only the authority to indict. The DPK had initially sought to hand over all of the prosecution's investigative powers to the police immediately. But it made a concession to allow the prosecution to deal with only two of six major crimes ― corruption and economic crimes ― temporarily until a new investigative unit resembling the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is set up in one year and six months.
Both parties have agreed to pass the compromise bills by the end of this month so that President Moon can sign them into law before his term ends on May 9. If the agreement is put into practice, the prosecution will not have sufficient time to investigate corruption allegations raised against the Moon administration. Those allegations include Moon's suspected involvement in manipulating the economic assessment of the aged Wolsong-1 nuclear reactor to push for his nuclear energy phase-out policy, and his reported implication in interfering in a local election to help his longtime friend become Ulsan mayor.
Undoubtedly the DPK has no reason to oppose the compromise. Neither does the PPP which apparently seeks to protect incoming President Yoon from a possible investigation into allegations that his wife was involved in manipulating the share prices of Deutsch Motors. That's why the compromise deal is seen as political collusion to cover up corruption, abuse of power and other irregularities of the outgoing and incoming governments.
The DPK and the PPP should not collaborate in preventing the prosecution from investigating politicians over corruption, power abuse, election law violations, and other grave crimes. They need to take more time to have sufficient discussions and build a social consensus on the matter. Reckless and hurried legislation push will only disrupt the criminal justice system and the rule of law, one of the key elements of democracy.