A 15-Member Increase in Local Constituencies

On February 27, the National Assembly opened the plenary session and passed a basis for the bill of constituency demarcation, which increases the population requirement of local constituencies from 105,000 to 315,000. This bill will be applied to the 17th National Assembly election.

According to the bill, local constituency seats will then augment from the current 227 seats to approximately 242 seats. That is an increase of 15 seats and the entire legislature membership will reach 288 if the system of proportional representation is maintained same as at present.

However, the entire membership number in the legislature is still flexible because each party’s divergence of opinion about the system of proportional representation has widened. Hence, bitter criticism of public opinion is now expected due to the neglect of official duties by the legislature which has not defined the election district yet with only 40 days left until the National Assembly election.

The assembly plenary session passed the upper limit of 315,000 and the lower limit of 105,000 both suggested by the Grand National Party and the Millennium Democratic Party. One hundred thirty-five members were for it and 40 were against it with 18 abstentions among the 193 votes out of the 271 total members. On the other hand, the Uri party’s proposal of the current 228 seat-freeze policy was rejected by a vote of 38 to 145 with 10 abstentions.

Once, the Uri Party had made a proposal of increasing local constituency up to 13 seats as the “Maginot line” of negotiation ahead of a vote, but then they submitted the current local constituency seat-freeze plan as the GNP and the MDP persisted with the 15-seat increase.

After they transferred the bill of the constituency demarcation to the constituency demarcation commission and let the commission coordinate a concrete township through uniting or separating with adjacent areas, the National Assembly will handle collectively all the related political laws of constituency demarcation, the election law including the floor, the Political Fund Act, and the political party law at the next assembly plenary session of March 2.

In order to let the president of National Election Commission Yu Ji-dam attend the assembly plenary session of March regarding President Roh’s recent election involvement with upholding the Uri party, the National Assembly passed a bill of “An Attendance Request of President of National Election Commission” with the approval of the three opposition parties.

However, the National Election Commission rejected the request stating, “it is inappropriate for a president of the National Election Commission, who is entirely managing the election, to attend in the plenary session 40 days prior to the general election.”

Whereas the MDP and the Uri party support the bill of maintaining the current 46 proportional representations or increasing proportional representations to the making a 299 numbered legislature. Even inside of the GNP there is splitting over the problem into two groups, one maintaining proportional representation same as at present and one for reducing proportional representation equal to as many as an increase in the local constituencies.

Prior to a vote of the assembly plenary session, a member of the Uri party Chun Jung-bae criticized through an annunciation of the proposal stating that there is, “no justification for increasing the floor of the local constituency. The MDP is burying themselves in preserving their vested interests by holding the election near at hand as hostage.”

At a discussion of the proposal a member of the MDP, Chang Sung-won, refuted, “it is hard to understand that there is no justification for increasing the floor while at the same time insisting on an increase of proportional representation.”

Sung-Won Park Seung-Heon Lee swpark@donga.com ddr@donga.com