From: sl26@ellis.uchicago.edu (sangjin  lee)
Subject: Parliamentary System
Reply-To: sl26@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Department of Physics, University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 17:11:17 GMT

(1) About the Parliamentary system:

Previous postings by a couple of folks cleared facts. My thanks. I should
have been more specific.
When I said 'parliamentary system', I didn't mean a general, theoretical
term. Rather, it meant a concrete application and more importantly, the
reason behind it.
Why are people in DLP so desperate to have the Parliamentary system? Is it
because it's a good political system? That's not the main reason. Actually,
I personally think that the parliamentary system has many virtues over
presidential system in general. It can stabilize political system greatly.
But the problem is, as far as I know, it works only if the country has parties
firmly established on political platforms and also it has two or more of
them. This criteria is not applicable to Korea at all. We've seen positive
examples of this in many European countries, like the Bretain(Tory and
Whig), Germany(SDP and CDP(?)), etc.
However, if parties are nothing but interest groups or formed according to
factions sharing regional basis, etc., it works very negatively. It only
helps political corruption (if there are two or more parties) or monopoly
of power (if there is only one big such one). The vivid example is Japan
(apology to Japanese readers). Now LDP enjoys virtually permanent power,
and there is no prospect of change. You know how corrupt it is. Of course,
there is the Socialist party which has a relatively solid platform, but it
can't obtain the power change because the relative size is too small. It's
worth emphasizing that LDP was born by a MERGE of two parties, Liberal
party and Democratic party.
Thus in sum, people in DLP had exactly the same thing in mind when they
discussed the parliamentary system. Also, that's why they're trying it
again. They don't want to take a risk any more.

(2) Black and White logic:

If I had said that the Republicans are evil and the Democrats are good,
some would have applauded, but most would've seriously disagree. Simply
that kind of idea doesn't make sense.
There is no telling that one party is absolutely good, and the other is
not. But we CAN say that in this specific situation, it's much better to
have the lesser of the evil.
If the democracy is deeply rooted, and people have experienced constructive
political processes, even this doesn't make sense either.

I'm talking about the limitation of the power group, not the individual.
Who are the people in DLP? They're the same people throughout the 3rd, 5th,
and the 6th Republic. I'm pretty sure that at least half of their
personnels are exactly the same faces. More importantly, they have shown
throughout last five years that they have fundamental limitations carrying
out reforms that we needed, politically and economically.
In that sense, we need the change of the power group. It's not that I favor
the Democrats, which I don't. We need a power change for the positive
process of the development of our democracy. We've had the same power group
for three decades, and the same regional power group will have it for five
more years.
I'm not saying that new YS government won't reform anything. They will do,
or at least they'll try. But mostly, they will be forced to do like Mr
Roh's government. Moreover, we didn't give a chance to the opposition
groups again. If we had done, there would have been much more positive
progresses. In the ultra-conservative dominated political arena, there
would have been room for the growth of the truly progressive power,
diversification of the political spectrum of the public, progress towards a
established bipartisan system, and the freedom of political prisoners the
number of which are more than doubled during the 6th republic.
What I'm trying to say in this legthy argument is that the power shift was
a demand at this stage of the development of Korean democracy, and by
failing to achieve it, we have slowed this process very much.
Again, all of the above is my private opinion, and open to criticism,
correction, and so on.




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