Even just claims require suitable language to win popular sympathy and nothing showed this better than the first presidential debate Tuesday.
In the trilateral discussion, Lee Jung-hee accused Park Geun-hye and her Saenuri Party of saying one thing and doing another with respect to labor issues. We agree and think Lee could have been far more persuasive had she used more refined expressions.
A case in point is the ruling party’s torpedoing of the Distribution Act aimed to rectify the current 24/7 business practices of hypermarkets to give some breathing space for old, small retailers like traditional outdoor markets and mom-and-pop stores. Under the revised law, giant retailers should close at least three days a month and four hours a day.
This is hard to understand given one of Park’s mantras in the ongoing campaign is people’s livelihoods. During the debate, the ruling party candidate said she should also consider small suppliers and storeowners.
But the governing camp is missing the core point in this debate ― the protection of small vendors from the onslaught of chaebol-affiliated distributing behemoths ― or are avoiding it by turning the issue into a zero-sum game between two groups of working poor each representing producer and consumer groups. Some Saenuri Party lawmakers even argue the new rule would inconvenience for working moms.
Any change from the status quo entails winners and losers and politicians’ duty is to maximize the former while minimizing the latter through laborious adjustment. They only have to compare advantages and disadvantages and work out supplementary steps to best make up for damages. The political community reached a bipartisan agreement to push ahead with the act based on experts’ positive advice. One can’t help suspecting chaebol’s lobbying is behind the Saenuri Party’s last-minute turnaround.
In another abrupt about-face, in a seemingly pro-labor direction this time around, the governing camp agreed to hold a parliamentary hearing into Ssangyong Motor’s unjustifiable dismissal of workers on grounds of managerial difficulties, dropping its longstanding opposition to it. The problem is the ruling party will open the hearing ``after” the election is over, not before it. The election is less than two weeks away and there seem to be few reasons the fired workers can’t wait a little longer, if only the politicians keep their words.
But the Saenuri Party’s track record shows the promises will end up as just that this time too. A recent poll says voters think up to 57 percent of election pledges will not be kept. The promise of a hearing was made by lawmakers belonging to the National Assembly’s labor committee, not by floor leader Lee Hahn-koo. The only way the commitment has any credibility is for Park to endorse it. Nothing less would dispel suspicions among protesting workers that all this is a temporary, vote-getting tactic.
The time is long past for the ruling party and its candidate to campaign with just lip service.
If the Saenuri Party passes the Distribution Act and holds a parliamentary hearing right away, they won’t even need to fear the one and last possibility of suffering a reversal of fortune: withdrawn candidate Ahn Cheol-soo’s full support for the opposition camp.