By ANDY JACKSON
Marmot??s Hole Guest Blogger
The National Assembly is opening its next session tomorrow. That means we have been treated to more than the usual amount of political silliness as the parties got together in workshops and retreats and politicians made pre-season attacks on enemies both inside and outside their parties.
President Roh continues to beat his head on the coalition wall, always discovering a new reason to bring the Grand National Party (Hanaradang, GNP) onto his rickety rowboat-of-state. One of his latest reasons is that the GNP is more popular than he is:
However, with little support for his administration and his oft-criticized policies, Mr. Roh suggested the need for the major opposition party’s support. “With the 30 percent approval rating given to the Grand National Party, I have no choice but to admit it as a partner, not as a target to be overcome,” he said.
Will someone please tell the President that when a woman says no, she means no. (UPDATE: In the case of Park Geun-hye, is seems that when a woman says no, she means maybe.)
While we are on the subject, the GNP’s Maeng Hyung-kyu wants his party to form an anti-Roh coalition with the Democratic Party. In my humble opinion that is dumber than any of the numerous dumb things the president has said about a coalition over the last several weeks. I could think of fewer things that would turn voters off than a return of the political alliance that gave us this. Thank God, Park Geun-hye shot that one down too.
Oooh, polling data
When talking about the GNP’s level of support, Roh was probably referring to this poll. I should point out that Roh misspoke. The GNP number is electoral support, not approval. The total current support for the parties are 30% for the GNP, 15% for Our Open Party (Uridang, OOP) and 45% undecided.
While we are talking about the poll, check out these numbers:
Asked about their preferences for the next president, 30 percent said they support former Prime Minister Goh Kun, while 16 percent backed Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye.
Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak and Unification Minister Chung Dong-young were third and fourth on the list with 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
I expect that Goh enjoys a high level of support because people remember what it was like for the government to be administrated by someone who acted like he knew what he was doing. You can read more on Goh here.
12 Comments
What the hell is going on in Roh’s noggin these days?
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....10002.html
This quote is stunning: “It doesn’t accord with the logic of democracy that a president must fulfill his term regardless of whether he has the confidence of the people just because he was elected once.” It doesn’t accord with logic, period, that Roh can believe he can barter away the presidency, and yet he keeps insisting on it. Is this guy for real? If the nature or function of the presidency were to be changed, there is an established manner to do so in S.K., which Roh conveniently ignores–or maybe he really is nuts, as a GNP lawmaker claimed today.
If Roh - Lincoln wannabe - had the courage of his convictions, he’d just resign. That’s the only reasonable follow-up to his repeated confessions of political incompetence. That he doesn’t just demonstrates that his ploy is just that - and not a very artful one. Even the knuckleheads in the GOP have managed not to rise to htis particular piece of bait.
There’s a Saturday Night Live skit where a child-like Dubya has just gotten elected and he’s telling his wise old dad how hard the campaign was and he’s ready to just take it easy.
I’m not doing justice to the SNL skit, but whenever Roh talks about wanting to end his presidency, it reminds me of that skit.
I really do think what’s going on in his head is that he made it to the top and he suddenly realized he didn’t like the view. He knows he’s in over his head.
Either that or he has hard evidence someone’s out to kill him.
In the Chosun: “In the last two-and-a-half years he (Roh) has said “I can’t take it any more” no fewer than 12 times, publicly.” He’s not the only one. Just vacate the Blue House, already.
I guess most Koreans wouldn’t like to hear my humble opinion, the president Roh is the best person for the SK presidency, if you ask me.
If he resigns, I will lose my favorit game looking around in the internet what he said today… Surely, he deserves the service for his life.
# Oh no, I shouldn’t have said this, since he might be tabulated in the collaborator list.
So, please just ignore me, generous Koreans. I express my sincere regret what I wrote here. Please, please accept my apologize…
without compensations.
Will someone please tell the President that when a woman says no, she means no.
Nah, she means I’ll say yes in yet a few more glasses.
But you could have a system “??la Miterrand/Chirac”, where le President is from one side of the Assembly, and the cabinet from the other side. Made for a few interesting years during Miterrand’s reign…
dda,
I’ve edited the post and made your brackets look superfluous. I’ll have to be more careful with my writing in the future.
What brackets?
Here is another article written about Roh’s attempts to change the political system in Korea. They do seem kinder to him: News Analysis: Roh strikes at Korea’s regional politics. This is from the International Herald Tribune.
Link is not working, R. Elgin (#9).
Heavens! Try this link then News Analysis: Roh strikes at Korea’s regional politics
I think what happened is that when I tried to insert [target="_blank"] into the link argument, so as to open a new window with the link, it gets mangled by the blog.
it gets mangled by the blogResistance to the blog is futile. Your tags will be assimilated.