The party that brought President Roh Moo-hyun to power pledged yesterday to seek his impeachment if he did not apologize by tomorrow for partisan election comments.
The National Election Commission ruled this week that Roh had broken the election law by backing a party before an April 15 parliamentary election. It criticized Roh but did not penalize him. Roh's team said it respected the ruling but regretted it.
"Unless President Roh apologizes to the country by March 7, we will submit an impeachment bill the next day," a spokesman for the Millennium Democratic Party said.
It was not immediately clear whether Roh -- who split with the Millennium Democrats in September -- could be impeached for violating election rules. Financial market reaction was muted.
"People doubt if it will actually lead to the impeachment of Roh," said Kim Jeong-hwan, an analyst at LG Investment and Securities Co. "We've seen a lot of political games before the elections and it may end up like one of those shows."
Roh's spokesman said the president, who has just completed the first year of a single five-year term, had not considered apologizing for saying last month he would do "everything legally possible if that will help the Uri Party get votes."
The liberal Uri Party is a pro-Roh group that split from the Millennium Democratic Party last year. Roh won an upset victory over a conservative rival from the main Grand National Party on the Millennium Democrat ticket in December 2002.
Under the constitution, the single-chamber National Assembly needs a simple majority to consider an impeachment bill and a two-thirds majority to pass it and thus impeach the president, subject to two-thirds approval by the Constitutional Court.
The largest opposition party, the Grand National Party, has 147 seats in the 273-seat parliament while the Millennium Democratic Party has 62, giving them more than three-quarters of the votes if they were to vote together.
Park Jin, a prominent law-maker with the Grand National Party, told reporters his party was not yet ready to join the Millennium Democrats on such a vote but the idea deserved serious consideration. His party's actions would depend on Roh.
"It's clear there are grounds to impeach him," said Park, who is a contender for the vacant leadership of his party.
Roh has no party affiliation but has said he plans to join the Uri Party in due time.
Stock investors showed little attention to the Millennium Democratic Party's move, with the benchmark index trading within a narrow range. A dealer saw no impact on the foreign exchange market. The debt market was similarly unruffled.
Roh has previously faced threats of impeachment from opponents that were never followed through. He injected considerable turmoil into his first year in office with abrupt threats to step down over an aide's funding scandals.
A survey of 1,000 voters by Media Research Inc, conducted at the end of last month, showed Roh's performance rating had dropped to 37.7 percent, from 52.4 percent in June last year.
Only 8 percent said they liked Roh more than they did a year ago, while 51.5 percent said they had developed a more negative impression in the past 12 months.
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