Jeong Jeom-sik says the ruling party's chair of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee has turned the Assembly into a 'shorts parliament'... 'The opposition should take the post'

[Financial News] Jeong Jeom-sik, floor leader of the People Power Party, argued on the 23rd that "the chair of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee must be returned to our party so that we can restore a working National Assembly, not one that just makes shorts." He said the committee had been run unilaterally by Jung Chung-rae, who served as chair of the committee in the first half of the Assembly and is now leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, along with Lee Chun-suk, now an independent lawmaker, and Choo Mi-ae, who was elected governor of Gyeonggi Province.
At a floor strategy meeting held at the National Assembly that day, Jeong said, "If the Democratic Party had taken the chairmanship of the committee and done a good job while showing exemplary behavior, our party might have recognized it as a new custom."
The ruling and opposition floor leaderships are currently negotiating the formation of the Assembly's leadership structure for the second half of the term. The Democratic Party says the ruling party should hold the committee chair to speed up the passage of bills, while the People Power Party insists that the largest party should hold the speakership and the second-largest party should hold the committee chair, citing long-standing custom. As the two sides remain far apart, talks on the Assembly's reorganization are at an impasse.
Jeong said the Democratic Party monopolized the committee chair for the past two years, but caused numerous problems by running the committee arbitrarily and engaging in unlawful conduct. "Did the Democratic Party run the committee well? Did it show what a normal National Assembly looks like?" he asked. "Chair Jung Chung-rae would throw witnesses out of the room depending on his mood, and he even threatened to expel opposition lawmakers if they glared at him any more because they were looking at him."
He added, "Chair Lee Chun-suk resigned after engaging in stock trading under borrowed names during a plenary session and became the target of an investigation," and "Chair Choo Mi-ae persisted in outright authoritarianism by refusing to appoint an opposition secretary."
Jeong said, "Last year, they held the first-ever hearing for Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae solely to humiliate him. During the Parliamentary Inspection of the Administration, they held the chief justice there for 90 minutes and would not let him leave. They even mocked him with a composite image calling him 'Jo Toyotomi Hideyoshi.'" He added, "It was not a parliamentary inspection at all, but a public shaming."
He went on to say, "They even rampaged through the Supreme Court building, broke into the offices of Supreme Court justices, laughed gleefully, and trampled on the Supreme Court itself." He added, "It was Chair Choo who failed to properly stop an independent lawmaker from obstructing our party's committee member by staring at him during questioning."
Jeong said, "Under such a committee chair, it was Democratic Party committee members who brought soju bottles and water bottles into the parliamentary inspection venue and started spreading baseless rumors about a salmon drinking party." He added, "They also failed to properly review bills, which is the committee's core duty, and many laws that were rushed through by hardliners, including amendments to the National Assembly Testimony and Appraisal Act, the Special Tribunal Establishment Act for Insurrection Cases, the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, the proposed law on creating a law-distortion offense, and amendments to the National Referendum Act, were hastily revised at the plenary stage."
He also stressed, "How shameful is that? Is that really what a normal National Assembly looks like?" He added, "To create a working National Assembly, not one that just makes shorts, and to restore a normal parliament, the chair of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee must be returned to our party."
haeram@fnnews.com Lee Hae-ram Reporter