[Editorial] For Whom is this President’s Confrontation?

When we watched President Roh Moo-hyun’s press conference yesterday, the reason why we have experienced the biggest chaos since last year becomes obvious. The nation cannot be peaceful since the president, the leader of government authorization, spreads and amplifies problems rather than solves them. Take a look at this case. The president rejected a national cry for apology in regards to the National Election Commission (NEC)’s judgment of the president’s violation of election law. The judgment of the NEC is only a form of “expression of opinion,” and accordingly, he doesn’t need to apologize about that because he already expressed his respect of the decision, he claims.

What the nation did not anticipate was the explanation of the apology’s legal propriety. Facing the introduction of an impeachment motion, a nation wanted the president to suppress words and to remove the percussion cap of emergency for himself. The president, however, chose not to appease the nation’s anticipation but instead confronted them.

The president aggravated the situation, commenting about “non-governmental party’s responsibility.” He claimed that the Millennium Democratic Party’s discontent with the Uri Party’s formation and the Grand National Party’s resistance against the investigation of the general election fund led to the introduction of an impeachment motion. Moreover, he even said that his unexpected victory in the general election is his primary sin. Non-governmental parties have not recognized him as the president until now because he was surprisingly elected against all expectations. He stated this is the reason for the discussion about impeachment.

We cannot figure out his recognition of reality. President Roh seems to think that he is still surrounded by the anti-Roh forces. While Roh won 49 percent of votes during the presidential election, he initially had the support of 80 percent of the people. Now, he should contemplate about who is responsible for his decreased support rate down to 20 percent and the introduction of impeachment motion. How soon can he recover from a delusion of persecution?

At the press conference, President Roh opened his heart about the issue of the wrongdoing of his surroundings and relatives and apologized. In some part, we sympathized with him, although we had the feeling that he was defending them. He asserted that the amount of the general election fund would be decreased if he excluded some portion for some reasons. It is no wonder nongovernmental parties’ are agitated, saying “This press conference added another reason for impeachment.” He aggravated the problem rather than settling it.

If President Roh’s recognition of the reality and capability of an emergency meeting is like this, we cannot find another alternative for the vote on impeachment. In this section, we emphasized again and again that we should prevent this situation. However, it seems that nobody cannot stop this situation. How dearly should a nation pay for this event?