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.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS