Democratic Party and The Citizens Party Merger in Sight... Will the Appointment of the Corruption Investigation Office Chief Follow a 'Direct Approach'?

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] The Democratic Party of Korea and its proportional representation party, the Deobureo Citizen Party, have decided to merge. This means they have given up the opportunity to secure one more recommender for the appointment of the head of the High-ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Office (HOCI), and it is analyzed that they ultimately chose the 'direct approach' of negotiation between the ruling and opposition parties.

According to political circles on the 22nd, the leadership of the Democratic Party and the proportional representation party Citizen Party formed a negotiation team the day before to prepare for the merger of the two parties. The two parties plan to complete the merger by the 15th of next month.

With this decision, the appointment of the HOCI chief, which was an immediate task after the general election, naturally falls into the realm of negotiation between the ruling and opposition parties. This is because the conservative opposition parties will take both recommender rights for candidate recommenders, which can nullify the ruling party's sole recommendation of the HOCI chief candidate.

According to the HOCI Act, a 'HOCI Chief Candidate Recommendation Committee' must be established in the National Assembly to recommend candidates for the chief. The recommendation committee consists of seven members, including one chairman: the Minister of Justice, the Chief of the Court Administration, and the President of the Korean Bar Association each recommend one member, and the ruling and opposition parties (negotiation groups) each recommend two members.

In particular, regarding the two recommender rights allocated to the opposition parties, it was widely expected that the Future United Party, the main opposition party and negotiation group, would take one, and the other recommender right would be contested between the Citizen Party and the Future Korea Party, which are close to negotiation group status. However, due to the merger decision of the Democratic Party and the Citizen Party, the conservative opposition parties such as the United Party and the Korea Party ultimately secured both recommender rights.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

However, it is highly likely that the United Party and the Korea Party will refrain from exercising their recommender rights. In this general election, each candidate pledged to 'abolish HOCI,' and in February, the United Party filed a constitutional complaint claiming that 'HOCI is unconstitutional.' In other words, recommending a candidate for the HOCI chief would mean that the United Party acknowledges the establishment of HOCI.

Even if the recommender rights are exercised, it would be problematic. The recommendation of the HOCI chief candidate requires the agreement of six out of seven committee members, and if the two opposition party recommenders oppose the candidate recommendation, the launch of HOCI could be indefinitely delayed. Without revising the law to require a majority of recommenders or five out of seven approvals, the launch of HOCI would be practically difficult.

Some analyze that the Democratic Party and the Citizen Party gave up the opportunity to secure additional candidate recommenders to hand over the candidate recommendation rights to the United Party in order to launch HOCI on time.

Song Kiheon, the Democratic Party's Legislative and Judiciary Committee spokesperson, said in a phone interview, "We are not considering legal amendments. It can be resolved through negotiation," and added, "We just need to nominate a person whom both the ruling and opposition parties agree on as the HOCI chief."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.