Uri Party and GNP Agree to the Four-way Discussions Today

The Uri Party and the Grand National Party (GNP) agreed to hold a four-way discussion, with the party chairmen and the floor leaders of each party participating, in order to talk about breaking the impasse of the Assembly’s special session at 10 a.m. this morning.

Ruling Uri Party’s floor leader Chun Jung-bae suggested a four-way discussion to address normalizing the assembly and setting a schedule to pass the bills yesterday, and the GNP accepted it after some controversy.

Yet, it is expected to be difficult because there is a great rift between the two parties regarding the pending issues including the four reform bills that the ruling party is pushing.

Before the event, floor leader Chun made the ultimatum for the negotiation deadline to the GNP at a central standing committee and a general meeting yesterday morning, saying, “The negotiations for normalizing the assembly between the ruling and the opposition parties must be finished by the morning of December 21 at the latest.” Subsequently, he made it clear that the ruling party will vote on all the pending bills by itself if the GNP did not comply with the negotiations by this morning.

GNP’s Spokesperson Chun Yu-ok conveyed that GNP Chairwoman Park Geun-hye convened an emergency countermeasure meeting yesterday afternoon and said, “The people want to see the politicians yield and mutually concede. We will agree to the four-way discussions regardless of its formality so as to realize the spirit of mutual concession.”

However, Uri party’s Chun refused GNP’s preconditions to the normalization of the assembly, saying, “(We) can never accept the GNP’s requests to handle the major reform bills under mutual consent and reserve them for next year.”

Jong-Koo Yoon jkmas@donga.com