South Korea's opposition delayed yesterday an unprecedented attempt to impeach President Roh Moo-hyun, prolonging the political agony as the country tries to right the economy and deal with nuclear-armed North Korea.
The main opposition Grand National Party and the smaller Millennium Democratic Party registered an impeachment bill on Tuesday. That set the political clock ticking for a possible vote from yesterday to tomorrow.
Roh has scheduled a news conference for today, meaning the opposition will have time to hear his comments before they decide whether to vote to unseat him for illegal campaigning for the breakaway Uri Party that supports him.
"We will be making the final judgment after that," Park Jin, a prominent member of the Grand National Party, said.
A two-thirds majority in the 273-seat parliament is needed to impeach the president, and is subject to Constitutional Court support.
South Korea's media urged politicians to stay cool and avoid plunging Asia's fourth-largest economy into constitutional chaos weeks before an April 15 parliamentary election and multilateral talks about communist North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Financial markets seemed unperturbed, with analysts betting a vote would fail to secure the needed majority.
"It's not an immediate threat to the market because it's a foregone conclusion that the president will not be impeached," said Jeon Sang-pil, an equity strategist at Samsung Securities.
The row comes amid charges by government prosecutors that the Roh camp and the main opposition received tens of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from the country's main business groups, known as chaebol.
The opposition wants Roh to apologize after the National Election Commission ruled last week he had infringed election laws by speaking in favor of the small Uri Party in the run-up to the election. It said, though, the violation was not serious enough for criminal charges.
Newspapers voiced alarm at what some called a looming head-on collision over Roh's refusal to apologize.
"As the president turns everything into a political tool and the opposition foolishly gets drawn into it, the nation is sinking," said the newspaper Chosun Ilbo, Roh's harshest critic.
Roh last month marked his first year in office, a rocky 12 months in which he has seen his ratings dwindle, grappled with North Korea and sought to tease the export-driven economy into full recovery after a dip into recession.
Uri Party parliamentarians were taking turns to camp out in the single-chamber National Assembly to try to thwart the vote.
The left-leaning Hankyoreh daily called the opposition motion a coup against Roh with no popular support.
The conservative Dong-a Ilbo said the president should apologize and the opposition withdraw the impeachment bill.
"There is little in the opposition parties' push for impeachment or the Blue House with its challenge to take them on that shows genuine concern for the nation and people," it said.
Roh's Blue House office pledged not to bow to the mounting pressure against the 57-year-old former human rights lawyer.
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