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What a majority of the people are concerned about now is not the beef and candlelight vigils but our national administration over the next five years. For a president to lead the government he needs public trust and the authority based on that trust. Public trust in President Lee Myung-bak has been severely undermined and his authority has seriously declined.
In the process of being elected and forming a new government, he made many promises. Economic recovery was at the center. The cross-Korea canal project and a small government through mergers and consolidation of agencies were important public pledges. He pledged to deregulate on a major scale through business-friendly policies and privatize many public enterprises. He also promised to cement our security by reviving the Korea-U.S. alliance.
His promises are crumbling within 100 days or so in office. The grand canal project has been all but shelved. His small government policy met adverse winds from the beef furor, because the administration approached it too rashly. The plan to privatize public enterprises was withdrawn by the administration itself. Business-friendly policy has been labeled anti-labor by the unions and friendly only to major corporations by small and medium-sized businesses. The Left, again taking advantage of the trend of reaction, is shaking the administration. Largely responsible for his crisis are the world's soaring oil prices and scarce commodities and the cheap won. But the Lee administration revealed a major weakness and failed to anticipate and prepare for them.
If Lee¡¯s ambitious reform programs are abandoned by the administration itself and broken by the candlelight vigils, what remains for the chief executive? What are Lee Myung-bak¡¯s values? What's more, seen from the perspective of foreigners, what will be his overseas credibility like if they read downtown Seoul protests by tens of thousands of citizens as a signal of retreat, affecting consistency in government? Korea-U.S. relations, it is feared, may suffer from a general distrust in this government, quite apart from the beef issue.
Lee must not become a traitor, even if he turns out a failure. He should not become a populist president, even if he proved error-prone. As shown in the beef protests, he made the mistake of failing to reward the trust given him by the voters and clumsily dealing with the population's pride and health rights. He should not make the second mistake of turning to the left with the turn-right signal still on.
Lee seems to have three choices. First, it's hoped that he will not lie or maneuver to evade the situation. On the outcome of the additional beef talks, for instance, he will hopefully not make an excuse or gloss over the situation, but explain it to the public honestly, and take the responsibility for the consequences. It is hoped he will never make any impromptu remarks or decision and act only after a prudent review and consideration as if he were writing history.
Second, the government must revamp itself and employ new people. It's hard for the government to recover public trust. Instead of attempting to frequently mend a cracked vessel, it must build a new one. What is important for Lee at the moment is neither his elder brother, nor his political foes, nor the ruling party, nor the opposition parties. However inconvenient it may be, he cannot be helped. Someone reportedly said he was ready to change "everything except my spouse and children": the chief executive should be aware that, from the perspective of reforms, "changing everything except Lee" is the order of the day. Lee should forget his past as Hyundai CEO and Seoul mayor, and the successful restoration of the Cheonggye Stream.
He needs to make a resolute political decision. It could be called a political gamble. He needs the time and power of concentration to recover his trust and authority. He should ask the people for time and stand before them with a determination to do his utmost to realize the meanings and values he himself has chosen. He must not disrupt the next five years in a perpetual atmosphere of threat of protests. A president cannot live at the mercy of opponents gathering in Seoul Plaza, telling him to do this or that. President Lee's biggest vulnerability is missing the right moment.
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