Appointments turn popular expectations into concerns
Even before she takes office, President-elect Park Geun-hye is backing off from her welfare pledges citing financial reasons. Voters are suppressing their disappointment for the nation’s long-term fiscal health.
It is an area that has nothing to do with money where Park made the biggest breach of election promises, however: personnel appointment. That is cutting short the already brief honeymoon not only with her political opponents but with the public, even including her supporters.
This is hardly a good start for Korea’s first female President _ and the country she will govern for the next five years.
While campaigning, Park put national unity ahead of all else, hinting that she would pick people with various regional, school and vocational backgrounds. She has just completed the appointment of Cabinet ministers and Cheong Wa Dae staff, but people are seeing results diagonally opposite to her pledges.
Park not only selected nominees for her prime minister and chief of staff from her home province of Gyeongsang, for the first time in recent history, but also filled four major secretariat posts from among graduates of the same university, also an unprecedented move. Only two were from the rival Jeolla province and another two were women, dashing cold water on widespread expectations on the first woman leader.
The President-elect also vowed to give substantive power to the prime minister and Cabinet ministers, but a look at the lineup shows most of them are bureaucrats and academics who are good at following “orders from above” rather than taking policy initiatives and taking responsibility for their decisions. The nominee for prime minister said his job is “to best assist the President,” while the designate for chief of staff asked, “Isn’t a secretary someone who has ears but no mouth?”
What all this leads up to is quite clear: the entire administration will be like a pyramid with President at the top, which allows neither the No. 2 person nor much dissenting voices from within, essentially similar to the 1960s and ’70s when Park’s father ruled Korea. Little wonder Park pushed ahead with appointing nominees to new ministries that have yet to be approved by the National Assembly, neglecting the parliament’s legislative authority power and crushing opposition parties’ proposed revision for the governmental reorganization plan.
For a newly-elected President who needs bipartisan support for both legislation and appointment, Park’s move is unimaginable, all but forcing the opposition party to become obstructionists.
Not only do many of her nominees have ethical problems in accumulating personal properties and fulfilling national duties but also they do not simply fit their boss’s self-professed philosophy. Park’s pick for her economic czar, for instance, is a person who has shown little interest in Park’s main slogan of “economic democratization” based on greater welfare, more equitable distribution and supporting smaller companies instead of large business groups. We are left to wonder whether the President-elect has forgotten what she said just a few months ago.
Opposition lawmakers are determined, rightly, to thoroughly vet the nominees. Any administrative vacuum is not desirable but Park laid all this up on herself. A late start is better than a bad start.
