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The Lee Myung-bak administration marks 100 days in office on June 3. A president¡¯s power and drive are strongest during the first 100 days of his administration. That¡¯s when a president sets up the framework of his policies for the next five years, takes the first step in accomplishing the tasks the public wants him to achieve and makes decisive moves to remove burdensome regulations that have been weighing people down, enabling everyone in the process to feel that a new era has dawned. But President Lee, who won 48.7 percent of the votes during the December election, now commands an approval rating in the 20 percent range. This is an unprecedented plunge in support. And the president had to apologize to the nation less than 100 days after the launch of his administration.
President Lee is pushing to restore the Korea-U.S. alliance, apply new principles in dealing with Pyongyang, expand Korea¡¯s economic growth potential and reform public institutions. But most of these efforts have either been bogged down by side effects created as the projects were pursued in haste or have merely generated a lot of noises but have failed to achieve results. That¡¯s why only 100 days after the launch of the Lee administration, the drive and accomplishments of the new government have yet to gain public attention, while only the failed appointments of key government officials, reversed policy decisions and mad cow fears have been the main issues in focus. External conditions are also unfavorable for Korea. The global economy is embroiled in energy and food crises.
The April 9 general election was an early warning to the president and the Grand National Party in terms of public sentiment, letting them know that the direction of state affairs needed to be drastically changed. If the president and his policies had been on the right orbit, then his key confidantes would not have failed in their election bids, while the hastily created ¡°Pro-Park Alliance¡± would not have created such waves. But the president designated the results of the general election as a ¡°victory,¡± throwing away the chance to revise the direction of his policies.
The managing of state affairs begins with the gauging of public sentiment. A failure to properly gauge public sentiment causes every policy to go against the will of the people. And if the government loses the trust of the public as a result, then it ends up losing the power to drive state policies. The president must listen closely to what the public wants dearly, what it is disappointed by and what it is shouting out to be fixed. What this administration needs most of all is a good pair of ears that can listen to the silent demands of the public.
Over the past 100 days, the opposition party appears to consider as its own success and victory the plummeting approval ratings of the president and the ruling party. But the opposition must snap out of this mistaken belief. The number of people opposed to the ruling party have grown by 30 percent compared to three months ago, but the United Democratic Party¡¯s approval rating hovers at less than 18 percent now as it was in February. This shows that the public, which has turned its back on the ruling party, is not looking to the opposition as an alternative. UDP lawmaker Kim Myung-ja, who called for the ratification of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement a few days ago at the National Assembly, asked that party¡¯s chairman Sohn Hak-kyu to get his act together. The UDP may not have paid much attention to Kim¡¯s comments, but one of these days, those words will remain as a painful reminder of that party having denied an act it had committed.
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