2012년 (중대) 선거와 대한민국 헌법정치의 구조적 변화의 모색: 절차적 민주주의의 확립을 위하여

Many scholars and political observers expect that two elections scheduled in 2012, general election in April and presidential election in December, will be so called critical elections in Korean (political) history. The rationale behind the expectation is that they believe the progressive parties will succeed in taking over political powers from the incumbent conservative political party through the elections in 2012. Generally speaking, a critical election is the one in which there are sharp changes in issues, party leaders, the regional and demographic bases of power of the parties, and structure or rules of the political system, resulting in a new political power structure. From that point of view, they could be dubbed as critical elections in terms of social and political changes they might give rise to the Korean society as a whole. However, I would like to argue that they will not be critical elections unless those coming elections will produce any positive changes in political patterns or behaviors of the political parties and politicians. I assume that there will be no dramatic changes of the behavioral patterns in Korean politics and therefore they shall not be called critical elections. In order to substantiate my assumption, I reviewed the whole records of behaviors of the political parties and politicians and found out that there has never been a year in which no physical altercation and/or brawl occurred since the adoption of the democratic constitution in 1987. In 1988, right after the ‘87 Constitution’, the 12th Term of National Assembly ended in violence and altercation among the politicians resulting from the differences surrounding the election bills. The physical violences and clashes among the political parties have become even more severe throughout the years and provisional session in National Assembly in 2010 ended up with great turmoils witnessing the same pictures as in 1988. I view these consequences as a lack of basic understanding and training of procedural democracy in Korean politics. Therefore, I would like to suggest several things to make Korean political cultures better. First of all, I would like to propose that the politicians should be free from “ethical overload” and adopt proceduralist view of democracy. This suggestion is based on Habermas’ view of democracy, rather than liberal and republican views of democracy. Second suggestion is that the politicians should realize that ‘Politics by Other Means’, resorting to prosecutors and judicial branch, for example, will result in the weakening of representative democracy. By the same token, I would like to urge the Constitutional Court to change its attitude toward adjudication on competence dispute between the Members and the Speaker of National Assembly. The Court should avoid to adjudicate the dispute or resolve it from representation-reinforcing view, once it decides to take the case. Next, in my opinion, we should focus on detailed procedures rather than focusing on constitutional revisions, as has been proposed by many scholars and commentators. Another suggestion is that the members of National Assembly should be banned to hold concurrently ministerial positions at the same time. The last, but not the least, one is that reforms should be made in electoral systems and means of nominating candidates. As long as there is a prospect that the procedural democracy described above can be established by 2012 elections, those elections will be critical elections. Otherwise, no matter how important the 2012 elections are, no-compromise politics in Korea will remain the same as usual, and the elections cannot be called as critical ones.