Do’s and don’ts for Park

Use popular mandate correctly and humbly

President-elect Park Geun-hye has finally attained her lifelong goal of winning the nation’s highest office. Awaiting her is the much harder task of turning her occupancy of Cheong Wa Dae into a legacy future historians’ will extol. Here’s a checklist of things she should and shouldn’t do toward that end.

To sum up, the 60-year-old leader must not be deluded by media eulogies about her various records: the first female president; the first daughter who followed her father’s path to the top job; and the first leader who won more than 50 per cent of the vote since democratization. For many voters, her critics in particular, Park’s gender is more a cause of anxiety than reliability; her father’s legacy is something from which she should break away, not follow; and, despite the seemingly widespread support, Park won slightly more than half of votes cast mostly by older, conservative members of the electorate.

Many of those who didn’t vote for Park will be watching with skepticism ― both regarding her inclination and abilities ― for a while. This is never helpful for the successful execution of the presidency. To turn even the staunchest opponents around, she must move toward them, even to the extent of appearing to be negligent of her hard-core supporters.

And the easiest way is to keep the promises she made during campaigns, pledges affecting the maximum number of people, such as public welfare, not pork barrel projects as the basis of her political support.

Nor should she back away from her various reform promises involving the very rich and powerful, such as family-controlled conglomerates and the politicized prosecution. The biggest concern of Park’s opponents is the possibility of her reneging on these vows for political and economic democratization and going back to business as usual. She must prove them wrong.

Park ought to show that conservative leaders can carry out reforms better than even progressive ones, because the former face less resistance from their traditional supporters. For example, she can immediately push for legislation of reform measures, such as curbing further expansion of chaebol and introducing a permanent independent counselor monitoring ranking officials’ irregularities jointly with the opposition parties even before she formally takes office.

The 18th presidential election has reaffirmed the conservative stronghold in this country that transcended even regional and income barriers.

And this explains why skeptics have nearly given up hope for better inter-Korean relations. But older Koreans remember their surprise in the 1970s and ’80s when the then conservative governments in Seoul, including one led by Park’s own father, former President Park Chung-hee, agreed on drastic rapprochement measures, including inter-Korean summits, with Pyongyang. There is no reason why the junior Park cannot, and should not, push for similar breakthroughs, though in far more transparent ways and for genuine, long-term peace and prosperity, not for prolonging illegitimate regimes as were the cases decades ago.

When Park entered politics 15 years ago, she said it was to complete the unfinished work of her father. Her election itself has more than justified what her father sought. Now, Park has the opportunity to finish her father’s job, only in the opposite way of decades ago by putting the ruled ahead of the ruling.

Many Koreans still miss former first lady, Yuk Yeong-su. What Park needs most now is her deceased mother’s soft, people-first leadership. <The Korea Times>