[Editorial] A Substandard President

President Roh Moo-hyun, who has completed four years and three months of his tenure, will stay in office only for another nine months. The presidential elections are only seven months away. In terms of mountain climbing, he has come down the mountain to a point where he can hear the sounds made from the village. However, President Roh must hate what he has to hear at the foot of the mountain. He introduced on Tuesday his so-called “advanced press system” that will restrict the news coverage activities of journalists and block communications between the government, the media and the public.

“I am a good president in comparison to my predecessors, but people give me very poor grades because they have a higher standard nowadays. I will also work hard to improve the quality,” President Roh said on the next day during a visit to a tangerine farm on Jeju Island.

It is ridiculous that he calls himself a good leader. Moreover, it arouses curiosity regarding how he will possibly be able to enhance the quality of state management that he impaired over the past four years and three months.

“In order to transform Korea into an advanced nation, we have to raise the level of trust and communication to a higher level and be able to acknowledge that your opponent can be right. Problems must be solved through dialogue and negotiations,” President Roh said in a congratulatory message on Buddha`s Birthday Thursday. Although he made good remarks on that day, not many believe he really meant what he said since he has “said one thing and done another” on countless occasions.

Has he led the nation into unity or into a division and conflict over the past four years and three months? Is recklessly infringing on the freedom of the press and the people’s right to know the path to becoming an advance nation in the 21st Century or the path to plunge us back into a gloomy era?

President Roh, who once pledged to break down regionalism and called for a “grand coalition of opposition parties,” recently reignited regionalism by saying, “I will abandon politics that go against the general trend for the organization that I belong to.” Although he emphasized the importance of transparency over inter-Korean policies and made laws for this, Roh is the one who stealthily instructed one of his confidants to go ahead with secret contacts with North Koreans. Will he ever be able to gain the trust of the people? President Roh must remind himself that he is the one who has stubbornly refused to admit the fact that opponents can be right.