[Editorial] Model Prime Ministers

Presidential Chief of Staff Lee Byung-wan said on March 24 that prime minister appointee Han Myeong-sook would become a “responsibility-bearing-type prime minister.” When asked, “Is it safe to assume that appointee Han will become a “power sharing and responsibility bearing prime minister” as former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan was?” by journalists, Lee Byung-wan answered, “A power-sharing-type prime minister is different from a responsibility-bearing-type prime minister in that a power-sharing-type prime minister is recommended by a majority of ruling party members and takes responsibility for both the party and the cabinet.” This explanation is hard to understand.

When Lee Hae-chan was in office, Cheong Wa Dae argued, “The power sharing scheme under which the president concentrated on long-term challenges, and the prime minister took charge of routine work has taken root,” and that this was the kind of ideal relationship between president and a prime minister that only the Roh Moo-hyun administration had been able to successfully implement.

But now the administration is saying that it is pursuing a responsibility-bearing-type prime minister, not a power-sharing-type prime minister. This is confusing. It is quite understandable why some say, “It is because the administration views that prime minister appointee Han is not capable of running state affairs as a power-sharing-type prime minister.”

If ways to run state affairs change depending on who is prime minister, it is not helpful for the stable and efficient management of state affairs. Is it as simple as downsizing the office of prime minister and expanding Cheong Wa Dae’s power, now that “the power-sharing-type prime minister with real influence” has stepped down? It is not. With a shift from a power-sharing-type prime minister to a responsibility-bearing-type prime minister, the center of policy making, supervision, and control would also move from the prime ministerial office to somewhere else. If that happens, some policies would lose consistency as well as momentum, and policy-adjusting costs incurred due to changes in environment would increase.

A familiar example is “the responsibility-bearing ministers system.” Under this system, all ministries are categorized into three groupings, including foreign affairs and security related ministries, economy related ministries and society related ministries. Each deputy prime minister takes charge of each grouping. But after Chung Dong-young, the former Unification minister, and Kim Geun-tae, the former Health and Welfare minister, returned to the ruling party, the system lost steam and existed in name only.

The staffing of the prime minister’s office shows how profligately the office was run. The staff of the prime minister’s office increased from 380 to 590 in a matter of just two years when Lee Hae-chan was in office. During this period, the number of committees under direct control of the prime minister’s office also increased by 18 to 49. Would the office have been run so profligately if former Prime Minister Lee had not been a prime minister with real influence?

Even a small company isn’t run like this. There should be some limitations so that a leader has to make such moves within the boundaries of the Constitution and law. It is not desirable to attach tags, such as “power-sharing type,” “responsibility-bearing type,” or “stability-ensuring type,” to prime ministers according to their “codes” and political considerations.