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Economic reform to gain momentum in S. Korea
SEOUL: The administration of South Korean
President Lee Myung-bak is expected to accelerate economic reforms
after the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) won a majority in the
299-seat parliament.
According to the National Election Commission,
the conservative GNP won 153 seats in the National Assembly while
the major opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) only achieved 81
seats in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections nationwide. It was
the first time that the conservative party reclaims majority in the
parliament since 1998, paving the way for the president to havea
smooth-running of his administration.
With the majority in parliament, the ruling
party will have fewer obstacles in legislating, while providing
strong support in parliament for the president and his reform
agenda.
Local analysts predicted that Lee Myung-bak will
accelerate his reforms to spur economic growth, including corporate
deregulation, privatization of state-owned companies and tax cuts,
on the back of a strong ruling party.
The stalled free trade agreement between South
Korea and the United States is also a priority for Lee to push
ahead. The South Korean and U.S. governments reached a draft FTA
last year, but the FTA has failed to get approval in both
parliaments due to strong oppositions. With the majority in the
incoming Assembly, the GNP, which has kept on supporting the
adoption of South Korea-U.S. FTA, is expected to give a quick
ratification of the pact.
According to a survey conducted by the Korea
Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) with 600 South Korean
enterprises on Thursday, 50.2 percent of the respondents said the
most urgent task for the government is to prompt realization of
deregulation agenda.
The business community on the whole welcomed the
GNP’s victory in elections as they believe it will help to push
ahead President Lee’s business-friendly economic policy.
“Boosting the economy is the core mission of
the new government, and the key to realize this is regulatory
reforms,” said KCCI Vice Chairman Kim Sang-yeol to local press.
Lee Myung-bak pledged in the presidential
election campaign last year that he will lead the country to achieve
a 7-percent economic growth every year, to raise South Koreans’
annual per capita income to $40,000 within 10 years and make South
Korea’s rank into the biggest seven economies in the world.
However, the latest inflation in South Korea and
rising prices of energy and raw materials in the world market add
worries that the South Korean economy might see a slowdown amid a
worldwide recession.
How to keep a balance between the stimulus
policy and measures against inflation will be a challenge to Lee and
his administration.
-- Xinhua
Nepal endorses peace, but tough challenges seen
ahead
By Subel Bhandari
KATHMANDU: Crucial polls in Nepal that had been
plagued by pre-election violence have passed off smoothly, but
analysts warn it is too early to declare peace has truly broken out
in the Himalayan nation.
The election Thursday saw a strong turnout, a
sign that voters wanted to give their resounding backing to efforts
to turn the page on a decade-long Maoist revolt.
It was also a major achievement for the Maoists:
in the run-up to the polls they were under fire for bullying voters,
but Nepal’s polling day passed off without a single report of
violent conduct.
It was, as the United Nations put it, a display
of “overwhelming enthusiasm” for a new era.
When the full results emerge over the coming
weeks, Nepal will have a new 601-seat assembly that will tear up the
country’s past status as a Hindu monarchy and rewrite a new
constitution from scratch.
But analysts say this process—from the
counting of ballots to the eventual expected sacking of unpopular
King Gyanendra—will be no easy ride for a country that has a
history of political instability.
“Holding the constituent assembly election was
a big challenge, but the ones ahead are bigger,” cautioned Sudheer
Sharma, editor of the weekly news magazine Nepal.
The key, he said, was for Nepal’s two biggest
mainstream parties and the Maoists—the once bitter foes who signed
a peace pact in 2006—to see through their often awkward marriage
of convenience.
“All the parties have their own road maps. If
the harmony between the big three parties breaks, it will be a huge
hurdle,” Sharma said, referring to the Nepali Congress, the
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
Strains could start to show shortly after the
votes have been counted, said Rhoderick Chalmers, Nepal’s country
director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
“The very first challenge will be to get to
the end of the counting process and have the major parties accept
the results,” said Chalmers.
This will be toughest for the Maoists, who have
to reconcile rival factions within the party—those ready for real
politic and those still married to the revolutionary dogma that
fuelled their “people’s war.”
If that dichotomy is resolved, the new
Constituent Assembly will then have to grapple with what to do with
the king.
“It is not really specified what is meant by
‘implementing’ a republic. Some individuals or small parties
might try to shift the goalposts and reopen the question of whether
the monarchy should be abolished,” Chalmers said.
The king, who ascended to the throne in 2001
after much-loved former King Birendra and most of his family were
massacred by a drunk-and-drugged crown prince, has become widely
unpopular.
But he can still count on support from sections
of the army and Hindu fundamentalists who see him as an incarnation
of a Hindu god.
Even if he does get the boot, some prominent
politicians say keeping some kind of symbolic monarch would be a
useful way of preserving the neutrality of Nepal—a country
sandwiched between competing Asian giants India and China.
The Maoists, on the other hand, are rabidly
anti-royal and see their leader Prachanda—whose nom de guerre
means “the fierce one”—as presidential material.
Political analyst and author Khagendra Sangraula
agreed that getting the new assembly to work together would be a
difficult task.
“They come from such diverse backgrounds, it
will be extremely hard for the 601-members to agree,” he told AFP.
However, managing to make it through
Thursday’s polls in the first place is a solid step forward for
Nepal—a country still reeling from a war that left over 13,000
dead, and still ranked as one of the poorest places on Earth.
“All these problems are not going to be solved
in a day,” Sangraula said. “But the process to solving them has
been started with the constituent assembly election.”
-- AFP
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