Will South Korean President Kim Young-sam resign?
South Korea's grave and deepening economic crisis has been entwined with the presidential election campaign which ends today as Koreans vote for one of seven candidates. The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin analyses the constitutional flaws which the election result is likely to illustrate -- and suggests how President Kim might end a protracted and damaging constitutional hiatus before the next President is sworn in on Feb. 25, 1997.
HONG KONG (JP): As South Koreans go to the polls today the only certainty is that the vote will almost certainly spotlight two constitutional flaws in the present democratic structure.
Uncertainty arises because of one major improvement in the electoral rules. But this improvement has meant that there is no advance knowledge of precisely how volatile the voters' mood will be as they cast their ballots amidst unprecedented economic gloom and nationalist anxiety.
Theoretically, the still-unfolding economic crisis in which South Korea remains enmeshed ought to produce such a backlash against the ruling party and its candidates that an opposition leader is elected President for the first time in Korean history -- and with a thumping majority.
While this possibility is conceivable, such a majority remains unlikely. This is mainly because the opposition leader is the still-controversial veteran Korean campaigner Kim Dae-jung. If a candidate's tenacity and commitment to the cause of human rights were the sole criteria upon which Koreans could cast their votes, then Kim would deservedly win in a landslide. But they are not.
Prejudices against Kim because his suspected "leftism" die hard. A regional antagonism of almost ethnic intensity, held against Kim (particularly in the southeastern Kyongsang provinces) because he comes from the southwestern Cholla provinces, has not disappeared, and will affect the result.
Kim, in his fourth run for the presidency, is now 73 years old at a time when younger votes look to the future rather than to the battles of the authoritarian past. Like the other candidates, Kim has not been able during the campaign to produce such a compelling alternative that he is certain to sweep to victory.
But the ruling party has also not been able to put up a compelling, youthful and unblemished candidate, capable of making the electorate forget the dire economic mess into which they have been led by the New Korea Party and outgoing President Kim Young- sam. Nominally, there is no NKP candidate in sight.
This is because the NKP has effectively divided into two new parties and two candidates. But all that the Grand National Party (GNP) led by Lee Hoi-chang and the New Party By The People (NPP) led by Rhee In-je have achieved is to remove all chance that either of them can possibly win a majority of the votes cast.
There are three reasons for this. Unlike the winning establishment candidates in the two previous presidential elections in 1987 and 1992, neither Lee nor Rhee is a favorite son of the vote-rich Kyongsang province.
While Lee and Rhee can not count on solid Kyongsang support, Kim Dae-jung and his New Congress for New Politics (NCNP) retain a lockhold on Cholla loyalties.
Thirdly, this is a seven-candidate race. The four minor candidates have no chance of winning -- but they will, by securing votes at the margin, help to make it certain that the next president wins office with a minority of the vote, at a time when South Korea badly needs a politically adept leader with strong majority support.
Hence the first constitutional flaw. As the Philippines is certain to illustrate in May 1998 presidential election, and as Taiwan is virtually certain to illustrate in the next presidential election in 2000, South Korea is today emphasizing the need for Asian democracies to adopt a sensible electoral device -- the run-off election.
In other words, today's election should merely decide which two out of the seven candidates are preferred by South Korean voters. Another election in a week or two should then force a choice of president between these two candidates. The new President would have majority backing.
As it happens, in Korea there is plenty of time for a run-off election -- because of the second constitutional flaw: President Kim Young-sam remains President until Feb. 25, 1998.
Precisely why there should be this two month's hiatus remains obscure. A successful candidate needs a little time to recover from the exhaustion of the hustings, but hardly nine weeks. The sheer absurdity of such a long interregnum as one regime gives way to another is perfectly underlined by the grim circumstances of December 1997.
South Korea remains in the throes of a financial, banking and economic crisis -- and is badly in need of decisive rather than lameduck leadership.
Nor surprisingly then, President Kim Young-sam has already come under pressure to immediately delegate power to whoever wins the election. The pressure is the more intense -- and is certain to gather post-election intensity -- because of the lackluster way in which President Kim has been recently handling, or not handling, the economic crisis.
No less a body than the Korean Bar Association has already argued for the present cabinet to resign en masse after the election, and that the President hand over "substantial authority" to the President-elect. The NPP's Rhee goes slightly further, and demands that the President-elect be given the power to form a "crisis-management cabinet" of his own.
Not surprisingly, an anonymous presidential aide has been quoted as dismissing these ideas as "impossible under the Constitution" since the president must "retain his constitutional right to make appointments and other executive privileges until the end of his term" late in February.
All that has been offered so far is close consultation with the president-elect. Understandably, one reaction to this has been to suggest the hurried parliamentary passage of constitutional amendments drastically shortening the handover period.
Certainly just about the last thing South Korea needs right now is a nine-week struggle for power between an outgoing and incoming president.
Constitutionally, there is no vice-president in South Korea. If President Kim is incapacitated, the prime minister takes over temporarily until such time as a fresh election can be held. But if, immediately after a fresh election, both the president and the prime minister voluntarily resigned for the sake of the nation, parliamentary approval would, presumably, be all that was required to ratify the president-elect's immediate accession.
There is however no sign of this happening even though it might be the one honorable way out for Kim Young-sam. Currently his public opinion support is down in single digits. Ironically, therefore, were President Kim to voluntarily relinquish power it would probably be the one act that could restore some of the prestige and popularity that he has lost.
While these two constitutional flaws seem certain to be spotlighted by the election result, uncertainty over the result persists because of one worthwhile change in the rules: no public opinion polls in Korea have been published since Nov. 26. So before going to the polls Koreans voters have not been harassed by constant reports of how they will be voting.
When the last polls were published prior to the cut-off point, they tended to show that Kim Dae-jung retained a slight lead but had failed to surpass a forty percent share of the vote. Lee Hoi- chang, having long lagged a distant third, had managed to overtake Rhee In-je, and to get close to Kim. Rhee appeared to be failing to convert his relative youth into an electoral asset.
But since Nov. 26, the Korean money, the won, has lost a great deal of value. The stock market, while volatile, has mainly slumped, along with the currency. Bankruptcies increase. Unemployment seems certain to rise.
Perhaps, most important, the nationalist mood of humiliation, shame and anger has deepened. As far as can be seen, no candidate has really responded to these complex emotions in such a way as to make his victory certain.