Demanding the right to engage in political campaigning.
“We
took the opportunity of elections this year to end the irrational cycle of re-electing
people who had been
connected with corrupt dealings.” |
Civic
groups in Korea led an unprecedented campaign to blacklist corrupt politicians in
recent elections, but the old guard is blocking the will to reform
There is an old saying
in South Korea that if a man rose to high political office, his family would be financially
set for three generations. But in their young democracy, Koreans are discovering
that they have the power to topple corrupt politicians and band together to battle
political vice.
The National Assembly elections last April will go down as a landmark for civic empowerment.
On January 10, the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ), a non-governmental
organization, released a list of 167 “unfit” candidates. Past involvement in corruption
scandals, violations of the nation’s Election Law, and resistance to democratic and
anti-corruption reforms were among the criteria for being blacklisted.
In the following days, a temporary alliance of 470 civic groups formed the Citizen’s
Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CAGE) in an effort to build both unity and
power in numbers. CAGE came up with an additional 47 names, threatening that if the
nation’s parties didn’t nominate different candidates, they would launch full-scale
rejection campaigns against the allegedly unethical politicians.
To no one’s surprise, parties accused CAGE of “political terrorism” and drew attention
to electoral laws preventing non-political groups other than labour unions from engaging
in political campaigning. But with the public steering the agenda—opinion polls showed
that 80 percent would not vote for blacklisted candidates—President Kim Dae-jung
and the Assembly amended the Election Law, permitting CAGE’s existence. Groups also
successfully lobbied the government for the mandatory release of candidates’ past
criminal, tax and military service records.
The new legislation was a deadly blow for corrupt politicians. Fearing rejection
campaigns, parties screened candidates more carefully and nominated many younger
hopefuls. Simultaneously, many party heads nominated blacklisted politicians in spite
of CAGE’s pledge. The coalition responded with a “rejection-list” of 86 candidates
and highlighted 22 main targets, most of whom were long-time political heavyweights.
In
with the young and out with the string-pullers
CAGE
held street rallies, petition drives, phone and e-mail campaigns and set up websites
aimed at the youth vote in particular. The sites, which featured the endorsements
of popular film, television and music stars, received almost one million hits during
the run-up to the election.
On April 14, Koreans awoke to a new, much younger polity. Voters had rejected 70
percent of the blacklisted candidates. Of the 22 special targets, only seven were
elected. First and second-term lawmakers, many in their 30s or 40s, made up 80 percent
of the new assembly. The election was heralded as a turning point in Korean politics:
a new force had emerged, the civil society sector, determined to rid the country
of crooked politics.
The rise of this broad coalition can be traced to Korea’s powerful democracy movement
that peaked in 1987, when middle-class workers and labourers joined students to demand
fair and democratic elections, forcing President Chun Doo-hwan to accede. “The anti-corruption
movement succeeds the democratic movements of the past decades,” says Kim Geo-sung
of the Anti-Corruption Network in Korea (ACNK). “This wasn’t possible before because
we [civil society] didn’t have enough power for these kinds of activities.”
But mobilizing a citizenry accustomed to reading about influence-peddling and payoffs
in headlines would not have gained such momentum without the shock of the 1997 financial
crisis, which brought on the most economically painful recession since 1953. Policies
that nurtured collusion between the government, the chaebols (industrial conglomerates)
and banks were widely believed to have precipitated the crisis. “The crisis was the
responsibility of the politicians who were pulling the strings of the economic system,”
says Kim Young-rae, a political scientist at Ajou University in Suwon. In July 2000,
a report by the Korea Economic Research Institute stated that corruption had eroded
national economic growth by 1.5 percent.
“We took the opportunity of elections this year to end the irrational cycle of re-electing
people who had been connected with corrupt dealings,” says Woo Pil-ho a co-ordinator
of the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD).
Following the election, problems within the civic sector itself threatened to derail
the nascent movement. Several prominent civic leaders were involved in scandals,
including accusations of accepting money from influence-buying corporations. One
CAGE official was arrested for accepting a large bribe from an election candidate.
Meanwhile, in the National Assembly, junior lawmakers keen to push further anti-corruption
reform vowed to cross party lines, an act once unfathomable in Korean politics. They
met fierce opposition, however, from the old guard who demanded party unity. And
although President Kim has pledged his support for the election reform bill, the
splintered Assembly, in which no party holds an outright majority, has been deadlocked
for most of the year. In November, after another bribery scandal erupted, the president
reaffirmed his government’s determination “to mobilize prosecutors, police and financial
watchdogs to eradicate corruption with a resolve that this be the last battle.”
Organizations like ACNK know that their mission involves wholesale societal change.
“We need to change the system and public consciousness,” says ACNK’s Kim, drawing
attention to the emphasis put on the group over individual initiative. “We have a
kind of system for preserving corruption. Anyone could be a whistle-blower, but if
he is, he’ll become an outcast.”
But CAGE’s success encouraged the nation’s top civic groups to form the Korean Civic
Social Solidarity Alliance. This permanent coalition is seeking legislation requiring
politicians to account for all funds and guarantee democratic party structures, particularly
with respect to nominations, as well as greater public participation in monitoring
and evaluating elected officials.
As one of Asia’s most developed countries and a young democracy, Korea is being watched
closely by the rest of the continent. “Serving as a model can be one of the best
practices of Korean NGOs,” says Kim. “We believe other countries can adopt such activities,
but the situation depends on the power of their civil society.” |
