By Jung Seok-jun, The Herald Business
The People Power Party said Sunday it is launching an online public petition drive to halt the suspension and disciplinary proceedings against prosecutor Park Sang-yong.
The PPP's special committee to block the indictment-withdrawal special prosecutor act said it "condemns the repeated suspension from duty and unjust disciplinary attempts" against Park.
"The endless suspension and disciplinary attempts against Prosecutor Park are not a simple personnel matter," the committee said, criticizing the moves as "the worst of evils — designed to destabilize the trial of President Lee Jae Myung and ultimately engineer a dismissal of the case."
The committee warned that allowing prosecutors who handled investigations and maintained indictments to be saddled with political blame "would set a dangerous precedent that subordinates the entire judicial process to the interests of those in power — not merely a problem for one individual prosecutor."
The committee called for an immediate halt to any further suspension or disciplinary proceedings against Park. It also demanded that the grounds and procedures for the disciplinary action be made public, saying the government and relevant agencies must "take a responsible stance to ensure that prosecutorial independence and due process are not undermined."
"Trials must be decided in court on the basis of evidence and the law, not politics," the committee said. It added that intimidating prosecutors and driving them into disciplinary proceedings to shake the foundations of a trial "is a direct challenge to the rule of law in the Republic of Korea."
The committee said the rule of law "is upheld only when the same laws and the same procedures apply to everyone — it is not a tool for erasing the trials of the powerful." It said the petition drive aims to block the unjust disciplinary action against Park and "work together with the public to stop the attempt to have President Lee Jae Myung's trial dismissed."
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
