"Those Who Supported Impeachment Will be Included in Blacklist"

Protesting against the impeachment against president Roh, civic groups are planning to put the opposition lawmakers who voted for impeachment on their blacklists for the April 15 general election.

The two large civic coalitions, “Civil solidarity for 2004 general election” and “2004 general election mulgari (overturn) union,” announced that each will resume its campaign for selected politicians and will consider the lawmakers who voted for impeachment as unqualified candidates of the upcoming election.

The “Mulgari union” held a press conference at a café in Jongno-gu, Seoul and said it will exclude 193 lawmakers, who agreed on the president’s impeachment, from its list of support, which is scheduled to be made public on April 7.

“In addition to ‘morality,’ one of the major criteria of selecting candidates who should be supported by the public is ‘approval for impeachment,’ which refers to destruction of constitution-based government,” said Choi Bong-suk, a spokesman of the union. “Those who were opposed to the impeachment motion will be fundamentally qualified as candidates to be supported.”

Moreover, the “Civil solidarity” group campaigning for blocking re-election of unqualified candidates said that it made it a rule to include the lawmakers who voted for impeachment on its blacklist and will reveal it on April 6.

However, the “Civil solidarity” group said it is concerned about the shape of movement, since most of the legislators from the Grand National Party, the Millennium Democratic Party and the United Liberal Democrats would become the target of defeat if it fills the blacklist with the lawmakers supporting impeachment.

“We made an outline for the moment to reflect the lawmakers’ decision on the impeachment motion on our blacklist,” said Lee Jae-myung, a team leader of the “Civil solidarity” group. “We will decide after further discussion whether all the lawmakers should be included on the blacklist or not.”

Yang-Hwan Jung ray@donga.com