SEOUL — A recent adjustment to the rules of South Korea’s National Assembly has made passing legislation has become a herculean effort. The National Assembly Advancement Act requires three-fifths consent from lawmakers before a bill can be put up for a vote during a plenary session. The act was passed in 2012 with the intention of preventing any one political party from riding roughshod over the opposition with a simple majority. It went into effect last year. The act also limits the power of the assembly speaker to bring a bill to a vote. Only under conditions of war, natural disaster, or with an agreement between the ruling and opposition parties can the speaker bring a bill to pass. One could argue, quite convincingly, that the national assembly needed this sort of institutional reform. The assembly had become well known as a place for occasional brawls between ruling and opposition lawmakers. One extreme, but appropriate, example is opposition lawmaker Kim Sun-dong setting off a teargas grenade inside the assembly chamber in a futile effort to stop the ruling party from ratifying the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. However, rather than promote cooperation, the act has created parliamentary gridlock. During President Park Geun-hye’s administration, the National Assembly has been about as (in)effective as the U.S. Congress. In fact, a good parallel to the act is the U.S. filibuster. There are differences, of course, but the effect is basically the same: it gives a powerful “veto possibility” to the opposition.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:04:35 +0000
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