Parties Misused Government Subsidy

`Policy development expenses were illegally used to pay salary for employees of the clerical office. (Grand National Party, GNP)` `An employee of the clerical office was transferred into a policy specialist.(Millenium Democratic Party, MDP)` `The government subsidy was spent to make calendars which contained the party’s honorary president’s writing. (United Liberal Democrats,ULD)`

These are ways in which the government subsidy of 51.6 billion won tax money were used by each party last year. This indicates that even the parties are doing the `window-dressing`.

The Joint Committee of Civic Organizations (JCCO), a permanent combined committee of 250 civic organization, said yesterday at a press conference, ``each party is illegally spending the government subsidy without leaving proper documentary evidence.``

The JCCO pointed out that after analyzing the `2000 Government Subsidy Treasurers Report` for three months, a report submitted by each party to the National Election Commission (NEC), 75.5 percent of the documents were unreliable.

The rate of the unreliable documents by each party is, GNP 81.6 percent, MDP 73.7 percent, and ULD 60.8 percent.

The joint committee demanded the NEC to cut the government subsidy according to the law. They pointed out that each party had violated the rules that each party must use 20 percent of the subsidy to develop new policies and that a party cannot hire more than 150 paid staff members.

There have been cases in which the government subsidy was used for personal purpose. The MDP spent 15 million won to pay its employees’ law suit expenses. The ULD consumed 5 million won for a same purpose and used another 80 million won to make the calendars with president Kim Jong-Pil’s honorary writings. The ULD also spent 44 million won for the floral wreathes.

The joint committee said that although 445 billion won of subsidy was given to the parties since 1981, there has not been a single audit.

It has been revealed that the government subsidy has occupied 39.6 percent of the three parties’ total income while their party fee has occupied mere 4.8 percent. Parties in advanced countries mainly rely on the party fee as a major income source.

The committee said, ``because the current political fund law opens the report to public for only three month and does not allow photocopying, 5 voluntary college students had to rewrite the documents by hand themselves which amounted to more than hundreds pages.`` ``We will improve the way of sharing information through administrative litigation to satisfy people’s right to know.``

The joint committee urged ▲ to nullify the limited reading for political fund report and to abolish the forbidden clause of photocopying, ▲ to audit on the political fund and strict regulation on illegal law execution, ▲ to open the detailed political fund to public, and ▲ to reform the summing up and distribution method of the government subsidy.

Soh Young-A sya@donga.com