President Roh’s Plan for His Second Administration...

The “general outline” of President Roh Moo-hyun’s administration for his second presidential stage is becoming clearer as Roh has spent 10 days in office since his return to the presidency on May 10.

President Roh, as a strategic approach, plans to nominate the top leaders of the ruling party who are regarded as leading candidates for the next presidency and appoint the former Gyeongnam Provincial Governor Kim Hyuk-kyu as prime minister.

Moreover, Roh clearly stated that he will carry out a reform in all social areas, including market reform, step-by-step within the coming three years.

Roh Will Directly Support the Next Presidential Candidate—

The political experts analyzed that President Roh is planning to prepare the 17th presidential election scheduled in December 2007 beforehand as well as to strengthen his “home ground system” by means of nominating both the former Uri Party chairman, Chung Dong-young, and former floor leader, Kim Geun-tae, as Cabinet members and former governor Kim as prime minister.

President Roh himself had actually been appointed as the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fishery by former President Kim Dae-jung after having failed in the 16th general election in 2002 as former President Kim believed, “Roh should require career experiences in order to be included as one of the pre-candidates for the presidency.”

Regarding the plan of “Prime Minister Kim Hyuk-kyu,” experts took it as a target for the regional election in June 2006, which will be a prelude to the 17th presidential election. Having confirmed a possibility in the Busan and South Gyeongsang areas during the last general election by obtaining 30 percent of the votes, President Roh might have picked up “Kim Hyuk-kyu” card to succeed in the 2006 election and assure the next 17th presidential election.

An official of the Uri Party said, “The two leaders’ same-time entry into Cabinet or former governor Kim’s appointment to prime minister are both focused on enhancing competitiveness between presidential candidates within the ruling party.” President Roh thought that Chung Dong-young’s one-top system in the Uri party will not encourage the average competitiveness in the ruling party for the next presidential election, he explained. Therefore, Roh must be directly supporting preliminary candidates who will be able to compete for next presidency and have them experience administrative management and compete with each other at the same time.

Acceleration in Government Reform and Eradicating Corruptions—

After having confirmed the reform of the Ministry of Science and Technology upon his comeback, President Roh is scheduled to conduct a major operation in the systems of financial supervisory bodies and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In addition, he forecasted a governmental reform drive which is focused on the shifting order system of all public offices.

Although having advocated in his presidential pledges in 2002, Roh restarts to establish “Investigation Committee of High Government Official’s Corruption,” now, which he delayed earlier due to the overlapped function with the Prosecution. By driving out corruptions in every corner of societies including political sector, it seems that President Roh is planning to make an overall changes in administrative structure as well as in privileged culture of the society.

Jung-Hun Kim jnghn@donga.com