The fatal attraction of abusing majority rule

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung must keep at bay the temptation to use the easy weapon of majority power.

Choi HoonThe author is the chief editor of the JoongAng Ilbo. “Special investigation” and “impeachment” have become everyday affairs. The Democratic Party (DP) vows to push for uninterrupted impeachments of government ministers and prosecutors in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration after the new National Assembly opens on May 30. The majority party attributes it to President Yoon’s veto of a legislative motion for a special investigation on the Defense Ministry’s handling of the suspicious death of a Marine on a rescue mission. Of course, you can hardly deny that the unilateral ways of the conservative government and the unreliable prosecution certainly played a part in the DP’s persistent animosity toward the sitting power.

Democracy, based on majority rule, could be the “least bad political system.” Yoon won the presidency by a narrow margin of 0.73 percent against his rival Lee Jae-myung of the DP because there were more voters who disliked Lee than Yoon. The president’s unpopularity basically stems from his ignorance of the meaning of 0.73 percent — more specifically, from a critical lack of engagement, modesty and communication with the public.

But democracy is also about respecting a minority and blocking a majority from domineering over the minority. To avert presidential tyranny, the legislature was given the authority to endorse nominees for senior government posts, recommend dismissals of cabinet members, including the prime minister, oversee state affairs and impeach government officials to keep the mighty presidential power in check. In return, the president has the right to veto bills and the executive branch has the authority to draw up and increase the budget so as to prevent the legislature from abusing its majority power.

Such mechanisms help ensure checks and balances. But a majority party’s maneuver to impeach a sitting president elected by a majority of voters is a grave matter. The grounds should be clear and serious. As it turned out, the attempt by the majority party to impeach former president Roh Moo-hyun backfired. That’s why impeachment requires a final judgment from the Constitutional Court.

In U.S. history, only three presidents have been impeached by Congress — Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. But no U.S. president has actually been removed from office through impeachment. In Peru, three presidents were ousted across four years until 2022 after “permanent moral incapacity” was inserted into its Constitution as grounds for impeachment. Since Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s first prime minister to finish a full term, was deposed in a military coup, three prime ministers close or related to him were removed by the Constitutional Court under military influence.

A special prosecutor bill is another bone of contention. In the United States, the original act governing the special counsel — appointed by a special panel of the U.S. Appeals Court and confirmed by the Senate — was scrapped in 1999 after 21 years of its implementation due to the criticism for deepening national division. The decisive blow came from the independent counsel probe into Bill Clinton, which was sneered as merely digging out the president’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky after spending $40 million.

Our special prosecutor act which benchmarked the abolished U.S. act was activated 14 times over the last 25 years, compared to 18 times over 21 years in the United States. The first independent counsel investigation on wardrobe lobbying was ridiculed for having uncovered just the real name of designer Andre Kim and his hometown. The special investigation into president-elect Lee Myung-bak in a financial scam involving asset management firm BBK produced virtually nothing. The high-profile power abuse investigation on Choi Soon-sil — a confidant of President Park Geun-hye who was eventually impeached by the legislature and ousted from power — led to five suicides and many non-guilty rulings to raise serious questions about excessive political vendetta. The only probe that shed some light was one on Druking, a power blogger accused of manipulating internet comments for political purposes.

So why is the DP resorting to such extraordinary means? For DP head Lee Jae-myung, his judiciary risks pose the biggest obstacle to his ambition to become a president. His loyalists may be advising that the sooner the next presidential election, the better for his chance to win. The hard-line faction rooted in the democracy movement often gets heated up at the mention of revolting against dictatorship. Their chant on “ousting the prosecutorial dictatorship of President Yoon Suk Yeol” will certainly help unite the divisive party toward the common goal of achieving Lee’s presidency.

But Lee and the DP are missing a strong point. Lee won’t be fighting Yoon in the next presidential election in 2027. Voters have given equal power to the legislature and the president. If the country ends up in a mess after the political wars over special investigations and impeachments, the liability would entirely fall on Lee. The next presidential candidates would surely attack both the president and the DP leader for prompting a national crisis for the country.

We live in a complex age where simplified slogans and expedient fights cannot solve problems. Lee’s political future depends on the DP’s activities to uphold the true liberal values of protecting the weak and the party’s ability to take power from the governing party. Lee must keep at bay the temptation to use the easy weapon of majority power.

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung must keep at bay the temptation to use the easy weapon of majority power.