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President Yoon Suk-yeol (Yonhap) |
President Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday stressed the need for cross-party cooperation in passing a supplementary budget to offset pandemic losses and expand economic and security ties with key countries.
In his first speech as president to the National Assembly, Yoon focused on “bipartisan cooperation” and expressed his strong willingness to resolve pending issues with the support of the legislature. After the speech, he walked through the plenary session to shake hands with members of the opposition Democratic Party and the Justice Party.
Yoon introduced the 59.4 trillion won (US$46.2 billion) supplementary budget in his speech, urging lawmakers to pass the law as early as possible to stabilize people’s livelihoods, which is his opinion is “more urgent than ever”.
He voted on the budget at his first cabinet meeting on Thursday. It includes 36.4 trillion won to pay at least 6 million won each to 3.7 million small business owners and self-employed who have suffered business restrictions due to the pandemic.
“The draft law makes sense as a first step towards solving the challenge before us according to the principle of parliamentarism,” said the new president.
“What the government took into account when preparing the supplementary budget was to fully recover small business owners’ losses while maintaining macroeconomic stability such as interest rates and inflation,” he said.
Yoon also asked the National Assembly for support for the government to expand economic and security cooperation with key countries and promote international norm-building.
“We will discuss ways to strengthen global supply chain cooperation through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with US President Joe Biden, who is visiting Korea this week,” he said.
The IPEF, an initiative of the Biden administration, refers to economic cooperation between the Indo-Pacific countries to protect themselves from China’s economic influence. Since the government of Moon Jae-in, South Korea has viewed participation in IPEF positively, saying it “welcomes” the initiative.
Yoon mentioned that the agenda will include supply chain stabilization and various economic security issues such as the digital economy and carbon neutrality.
In Yoon’s post-speech meeting with reporters, Yoon said that there is no division between ruling and opposition parties when it comes to the relationship between government and parliament.
“For me personally, it was a pleasant and honorable event, and I hope that this opportunity today will serve as a page for the development of our democracy and parliamentarianism,” he told the press.
Such a move by Yoon is essential to governing the country with the National Assembly dominated by members of the opposition Democratic Party.
The Yoon administration faced challenges in appointing ministerial candidates, including a prime minister, due to opposition from the Democratic Party. He wanted to hold a dinner with leaders of the ruling and opposition parties on Monday night to have a frank discussion, but the meeting was canceled because of the non-response from the Democratic Party.
Despite his speech, however, it still seems difficult to get the opposition party to cooperate.
In response to Yoon’s plea for cooperation, Democratic Party leaders countered by asking him to remove his ministerial candidates and secretaries first. The Democratic Party called the nominees “below average” and claimed they had a “guilty conscience.”
Faction leader Yun Ho-jung urged Yoon to cancel nominating a candidate for the State Council as he was deemed “unelectable” for national unity and cooperation between the ruling and opposition parties.
By Shin Ji-hye ([email protected])
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