'Labor union bill and revised commercial law shackling semiconductor cluster'
By Jung Seok-jun, The Herald Business
People Power Party floor leader Jung Seok-jun said Thursday that the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee, now under Democratic Party control, had become a body where "the rule of law has died."
Speaking at a floor strategy meeting at the National Assembly, Jung said Democratic Party members of the committee — including Seo Young-gyo, whom he described as intoxicated by the cheers of hard-line supporters — would "slash the rule of law with the blade of power." His greatest concern, he added, was that the committee was "leading the charge in dismantling the country's judicial system." He urged the Democratic Party to remember that "all responsibility will lie with the government and the ruling party" if it accelerates what he called a judicial crisis after its party convention.
Turning to the Democratic Party's move to form a task force on revising the Criminal Procedure Act — which would determine whether prosecutors retain supplementary investigative powers — Jung said completely separating investigation from indictment and stripping prosecutors of those powers would create endless jurisdictional disputes between investigative agencies, ultimately passing the burden onto victims.
He went on to say that even the advisory committee of the Lee Jae Myung government's prosecution reform task force, and President Lee himself, had said prosecutors' supplementary investigative powers should be preserved. Jung called the Democratic Party's push a "shallow piece of political engineering" aimed at rallying hard-line supporters through what he characterized as retaliatory action against prosecutors ahead of the party convention.
On shareholder and union opposition to Samsung Electronics and SK hynix investments in a semiconductor complex in the Honam region, Jung said the argument that the president and corporate chiefs should not make decisions behind closed doors — but instead transparently disclose the rationale to shareholders and seek their verification and consent — "sounds quite reasonable."
He said the labor union protection bill and the strengthened commercial act, both pushed through by the Lee Jae Myung government and the Democratic Party, were now "shackling the Gwangju-South Jeolla Province semiconductor cluster," calling them "hasty populist policies churned out without sufficient deliberation or scrutiny, each targeting a different base for political gain." Jung urged President Lee to "fundamentally overhaul the populist approach to governance without delay," saying the current state of affairs was the result of an administration consumed by immediate political interests rather than governing with a long-term vision for the nation's future.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
