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☞ Issue 95
글씨크기 크게 글씨크기 작게 기사 메일전송 기사 출력
Lee Myung-bak’s transition overdrive

Jungsoo Jang (2008/01/27 19:28)  

“The more you’re in a hurry, the more you should take your time,” goes an old piece of Korean wisdom. If you make haste because something is urgent, you ignore the order in which things should be done and make mistakes that can mess up what you were trying to accomplish. Conversely, there are many times when you can fix things with relative ease if you take your time and stay composed. The dazzling activities of the presidential transition team remind you of that old saying. The whirlwind pace of President-elect Lee Myung-bak and his overly ambitious transition team are causing more than a few negative side effects. Frequently you see policies announced on one day and canceled the next. Sometimes policies that are made public in the morning are reversed or taken back altogether by the time it’s afternoon, just hours after being made public. The anxiety is growing. Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and their people had had no experience in the executive branch, yet there was not this kind of confusion, and to this degree, when they were preparing to assume office.

Confusion has been aroused mostly because, instead of having the transition team calmly do the work of taking the reins of power, subcommittees are scurrying to come up with policy alternatives for the next administration and it’s as if they’re in competition with one another. Ascertaining the status of the various policies of the outgoing administration is supposed to be central to a presidential transition team’s work. The idea is to minimize the confusion that arises as the executive branch changes and to facilitate continuity. The right way to go about making changes is to do so after your new administration has been sworn in, at which point it can engage in an overall review of existing policies and come up with its own alternatives. That is how it is done in the United States and other prominent nations.

The rash way the transition team is unleashing various policies, lacking in authority and competence as it does, could easily boomerang and come back to haunt Lee later on. Even among conservatives who supported him in the election, there are people getting nervous about the transition team’s unpredictability when it comes to policy announcements. There are an increasing number of people worried about whether Lee has real blueprints and a timetable for running the country as they watch what appear to be hastily put together policies in significant areas like inter-Korean relations, foreign policy, the economy and education.

The committee’s amateurism could very likely lead to a sense of instability in major policy areas. The wholesale denial of Roh’s administration of government could lead to another set of polices that are excessive. Transition team members have been talking about a U.S.-Korea alliance that would be “extreme,” and the ills of such an approach would be no less serious than the problems with the extremes of independence from the alliance. Discarding the policy of engagement with North Korea, something symbolized by the decision to do away with the Unification Ministry, might isolate South Korea in the course of the six-party talks. You also wonder how much it is in the country’s interests to have the alliance move in a direction that stands so close to the Bush administration. Being too close to the Bush administration could cause Lee to find himself in a difficult position if the Democrats win the next U.S. presidential election, so wisdom needs to be applied to any adjustments in the relationship. Foreign policy is really an area that demands a pragmatic approach. Sudden changes in the university entrance system will most certainly lead to painful consequences for students and parents, so this is no less true for education policy.

Lee’s administration could find itself facing a serous lack of public confidence before it even assumes office if this confusion continues. It will be another month before Lee is inaugurated, so the country still has high expectations for his administration and will be patient with the trials and errors that happen early on. Once inaugurated, however, it will be a different story. Ultimately, it all boils down to Lee’s leadership. The most requisite quality of a leader is the ability to coordinate what goes on and navigate through the crises. The downfall of the administration of Roh Moo-hyun should be enough to see what kind of political tragedy is caused by a lack of leadership.
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* Jungsoo Jang is an Editor of The Hankyoreh’s English website
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* resource=
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_opinion/265573.html




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