The perpetual abuse of impeachment

Elected public officials must be judged through an election, not impeachment.

Ko Jung-aeThe author the acting editor-in-chief of the JoongAng Sunday. Democracy can crumble when laws are weaponized for political purposes. Peru is a poster child for a democracy that failed by political collapse through the institutional weaponization of laws, as argued by Harvard professors who co-authored their bestseller “How Democracies Die.” Under the Peruvian Constitution, the seat of the head of state can be declared “vacant” if two thirds of the members of the parliament find “moral incapacity” in the president. The opposition mustered enough votes and kicked out the president they disliked by using that definition. The incapacity term is applied to every issue that can be disputed in moral terms.

The presidential hunt became a norm. Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned less than two years into his five-year term in 2018 amid the debates over the presidential vacancy. His successor Martin Vizcarra also lasted two years for being “morally incompetent.” Pedro Castillo who became Peru’s first left-wing president in 2021 couldn’t survive two years after the parliament’s third impeachment attempt. Peruvian presidents are tested for how many impeachments they can survive, the authors said.

Impeachment used to be a taboo word in Korea. The impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye at least had a meaning with some conservative forces rallying behind the move. But these days, it has become a regular and pre-emptive practice in the legislature dominated by the majority Democratic party (DP) for two consecutive terms. The first-ever impeachments of a judge, a cabinet minister and prosecutors were all made by the majority party.

Two Korea Communication Commission (KCC) chairpersons resigned under the motion of impeachment. A vice chair acting as the head also stepped down under the same pressure. The new KCC head was threatened with impeachment even before she took office on Wednesday.

The DP is busily readying an impeachment motion against President Yoon Suk Yeol. It even improvised a strange hearing based on public petitions and summoned the controversy-rich first lady for questioning. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t turn up and this only helps building a case for Yoon’s impeachment.

The DP’s internal race to elect new leadership became a stage to rally support for presidential impeachment. Candidates competed over how far they could go. During a debate among the candidates for its Supreme Council, impeachment-related words were mentioned 44 times. One even declared that impeachment was the zeitgeist of the times.

Whether Constitutional and legal violations by senior public employees have become that serious is not clear. The Constitutional Court dominated by progressive-minded judges repeatedly denied impeachment motions. Most of the prosecutors to be impeached had investigated former DP leader Lee Jae-myung. One reason for impeaching President Yoon is that he fueled war-like tensions and neglected his duty to work towards peace and unification. But the original sin lies with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, not our president. The majority party resorts to impeachment because it has the power to do so.

This cannot be right. Impeachment disrupts the state operation process agreed to by the people. It will only deepen the fragmentation of our society rather than

stitching it back together. The liberal front has taken the wrong path since the Moon Jae-in administration became devoted to the vengeful quest to “root out past evils” instead of unifying the nation.

The torrent of impeachment motions will likely be rejected by the Constitutional Court. Still, the consequence of the endless weaponization of impeachment could be grave. It will lead to stronger acrimony. The DP is seriously mistaken. President Yoon is also not without fault. He stayed aloof when he should have responded to the deepening public rage over his unilateral ways of national governance and his wife, which stoked greater skepticism and protest. The president has let the liability fall on him instead of the DP. A political commentator said that people will condone his impeachment even if they won’t rush to the streets to demand his resignation. The president has not changed. Still, impeachment cannot be the answer. Elected public officials must be judged through an election, not impeachment.