National Assembly holds plenary session over prosecution reform bills

Apr 28, 2022, 08:29 am

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National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug closes his eyes at a plenary session over bills calling for separation of the prosecution’s powers to indict suspects and its powers to conduct investigations on April 27, 2022./ Source: Joint Press Corps

AsiaToday reporter Jeong Geum-min

The rival parties continued to clash over a bill to revise the Prosecutor’s Office Act aimed at separating the prosecution’s powers to investigate and indict. The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) launched a filibuster to delay the final vote on the bill, while the ruling Democratic Party (DP) attempted to neutralize it by shortening parliamentary sessions. The fierce confrontation between the two main parties has put the political situation in turmoil even before the inauguration of the new government.

National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug convened the plenary session on Wednesday and laid the bill. The PPP defined the DP’s legislation taking advantage of its majority as ‘dictatorship’ and immediately started a filibuster. The ruling DP pushed the ‘revision to change of session’, aimed at shortening the April National Assembly session to Wednesday, effectively neutralizing the filibuster.

The rival parties were in a similar situation when they confronted over the revision of the High-ranking Officials Crime Investigation Act in 2020. The PPP is planning to take all measures to prevent the bill from being processed.

Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, floor leader of the PPP, spoke first in the filibuster, saying, “The DP has virtually neutralized the filibuster by using tricks such as splitting sessions.” He pointed out the DP completely rejected his party’s suggestion to curtail the prosecution’s investigative right to four crime types – corruption, economic crimes, public officials and election crimes.

“It is the duty of a politician to always check and look back at the eye level of the public, even if he has his own philosophy and political course,” Rep. Kweon said. “If a genuine reform is about completely scrapping the prosecution’s investigative powers, as the DP claims, what have they done for the last five years? They are trying to approve the bill as if it were a military operation,” he said.

The PPP also filed an injunction at the Constitutional Court to suspend the bill. Separately, lawmakers of the PPP decided to take turns holding a sit-in at the National Assembly for three hours from Wednesday to May 5.

In response, the DP argued that the PPP undermined the “spirit of the agreement between the ruling and opposition parties.” Rep. Park Hong-keun, floor leader of the Democratic Party, told reporters after a meeting with Rep. Kweon that he requested the PPP to reflect on the fact they broke the earlier agreement and to immediately apologize to the people and the DP.

#National Assembly #prosecution reform bill #DP #PPP