The South Korean Parliament approved this Friday a motion presented by the opposition to dismiss Han Duck-soo, prime minister and acting president for just two weeks, deepening the institutional crisis in which the country has been plunged since the declaration of martial law. at the beginning of the month.
The disqualification of Han, who had inherited the functions of the also dismissed Yoon Suk-yeol, marks the first time in democracy that South Korea dismisses an interim head of Government and State and implies that the position will be held provisionally from today Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok.
The initiative was approved by 192 votes in favor, the total number of seats that the opposition has, and was boycotted by the ruling and conservative People’s Power Party (PPP).
Angry protest from the ruling party
Minutes before the vote, the president of the South Korean Parliament, Woo Won-sik, announced that Han’s dismissal would become effective if the motion was approved in the chamber by a simple majority, which led to an angry protest from the PPP deputies. .
The ruling party claimed that, since it was an interim president, the vote should use the same scale – two-thirds of Parliament, a proportion not held by the opposition – that is used to approve the removal of a president in South Korea.
However, the liberal Democratic Party (PD), the main opposition party that presented the motion and to which Woo belongs, had been defending that in Han’s case the same metric that is used to dismiss the rest of the members of the Cabinet should be used, the simple majority.
The PD yesterday presented a motion to disqualify Han after he said he would not approve appointments of new judges to the Constitutional Court, as demanded by the opposition, until the two main parties reached an agreement regarding the three judges who must occupy the vacant seats of the highest South Korean court.
Trial in the Constitutional Court
The Constitutional Court is trying Yoon Suk-yeol for his declaration of martial law on December 3, and has until June 11 to ratify it or not.
If these three vacancies in the court are not filled, the six judges who currently make up the Court must unanimously approve the dismissal for it to become effective.
The PD is trying to ensure that Yoon’s dismissal is completed as soon as possible so that an early presidential election can be called in which he would be the clear favorite.
The PPP seems to be seeking instead to delay the process as much as possible given the possibility that the Supreme Court could soon ratify a sentence for violating the electoral law that weighs on the leader of the liberals, Lee Jae-myung, who would be beheaded in the face of the elections.
Han’s dismissal now leads the Asian country to even greater uncertainty, since the opposition has said that it will continue to pressure the Government and the ruling party to renew the Constitutional Court and approve special investigations against Yoon and the first lady and that it will continue to present any impeachment motions are necessary until this is achieved.
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