Opposition seeks to impeach Park
Peace marks uprising — so far
SEOUL, Dec 2, (Agencies): South Korea’s three opposition parties said they would file an impeachment motion Friday against beleaguered President Park Geun-Hye, and push for a national assembly vote next week.
Accused of colluding with a close friend who faces embezzlement charges, Park said last week she would be willing to step down in the face of weekly mass protests that have seen millions take to the streets of Seoul and other cities.
The opposition said Park’s offer, which put the manner and timing of her resignation in the hands of parliament, was an effort to buy time and avoid impeachment.
The joint opposition commands the most seats in the legislature, but would need the support of nearly 30 members of Park’s Saenuri Party to secure the two-thirds majority needed to impeach the president.
“We’ve agreed to actively persuade anti-Park (Saenuri) lawmakers to back us,” said Park Jie-Won, parliamentary floor leader of the opposition People’s Party.
If passed, the motion would go to the Constitutional Court for approval — a process that could take up to six months.
The Saenuri Party has called on Park to stand down voluntarily in April next year, allowing a presidential election to be held in June — six months ahead of schedule.
Party officials have given her a week to accept the timeline or face impeachment.
The scandal engulfing Park’s administration is centred around a long-time friend of the president, Choi Soon-Sil, who has been dubbed “Korea’s Rasputin”.
Prosecutors say they have evidence that Park colluded in Choi’s efforts to coerce firms to “donate” tens of millions of dollars to foundations she set up for personal gain.
Park has been named as a formal suspect in the investigation, making her the first sitting president to be subject to a criminal probe while in office.
While she retains the presidency, Park cannot be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason, but she would lose that immunity once she steps down.
Massive weekly protests have been intensifying over the past month, with organisers claiming up to 1.5 million people braved freezing temperatures in Seoul last Saturday to demand Park’s resignation.
Protest
Activists have called for a sixth protest this Saturday in central Seoul, despite Park’s announcement that she would be willing to cede power.
Park on Wednesday approved a lawyer recommended by the opposition-controlled parliament as an independent prosecutor.
The special prosecutor will interview the president and be given 120 days to follow up on the findings of state investigators.
Park has backtracked on earlier promises to make herself available for questioning in a judicial probe.
Meanwhile, when South Korean students protested in the 1960s and 1980s, blood flowed in the streets. In 2016, children launch flashing toys into the night air as entertainers lead a massive, docile crowd in popular sing-alongs.
This striking contrast — from handto-hand combat to scenes out of Disney — represents an accomplishment for South Korea, a democracy that was a dictatorship not too long ago and where social and political divisions still run deep.
But the current protests to force President Park Geun-hye from power over allegations she let a corrupt confidante pull government strings share an important quality with what came before: Now, as then, a popular movement is on the verge of pushing out a deeply unpopular leader.
That this peaceful, compartmentalized (mostly Saturdays, from around noon to midnight) uprising looks set to succeed is something of a surprise in a country with a long history of messy, often violent resistance.
Just last year, protests against Park saw buses toppled and vandalized and a farmer get blasted with a water cannon and later die. Demonstrators in recent years have driven trucks into the gates of the Japanese Embassy, and lopped off their fingers in nearby streets, to protest territorial and historical disputes with Tokyo. The current US ambassador’s face was slashed last year by a South Korean activist.
In 1960 and the 1980s, often-violent mass protests forced one authoritarian leader to flee and a dictatorship to allow democratic elections.
The recent demonstrations have seen a collective effort at something novel: docility.
Protesters plaster ubiquitous police buses with flower stickers. When some have climbed on the buses, they’ve been admonished by others to get down and be peaceful. Social media have played a part. People have taken to Facebook and other platforms to encourage each other to protest calmly so they can bring their children to witness a part of history.
On the second Saturday protest, when organizers announced they would march toward the Blue House, many questioned online whether demonstrators risked violence by confronting the mass of police who would be guarding the president’s residence and office. This forced organizers to make an additional pledge to demonstrate peacefully. The authorities have also helped. Court decisions forced the opening of streets closer to the Blue House where police had blocked protesters last year when violence erupted. Police have also avoided aggressive crowd control measures such as pepper spray and water cannons.
The labor and civic groups who organize the rallies have decided to use sheer numbers, not violence, to try to force Park out.