[Editorial] An ‘F’ for Roh

The government policy assessment team of the Citizens’ Coalition for Better Government (CCBG) gave failing marks yesterday to the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s management of national affairs for the last three years. The team cited code-based personnel decisions, unilateral policy implementation, and exhaustive ideological conflicts as some of the reasons behind its grades.

The group Citizens United for Better Society (CUBS) also criticized the overall failure of state affairs, saying, “The three years under the participatory government were days when they did not even know how to work.” Low growth and poverty caused by such failures were also proved in several papers presented in the 2006 Joint Academic Symposium on Economics (February 16-17), attended by 40 economics-related societies.

Some 400 experts—government officials, scientists, engineers, professors, teachers, businessmen and journalists—who replied to the CUBS survey gave the government a score of 2.43 points out of 5.0, or 48 out of 100, to the Roh Moo-hyun administration for its management of state affairs over the past three years. Specifically, the administration failed in terms of personnel decisions, efficiency, credibility, and democracy.

Roh’s reformative leadership was also rated below a 3.0. Among 25 items in politics and diplomacy, social welfare, and economy, only three got marks above a 3.0.

All eight economic areas graded got failing marks. The effort to become Northeast Asia’s economic hub, the stabilization of housing prices, and the alleviation of the rich-poor divide, items that the current administration has emphasized over the last three years, got especially low marks of 2.12. The situation was the same for the government’s attempts to create a business-friendly environment, educational reform and, improve labor-management relations. “Excess politics, ideological deviationism, and naïve problem recognition have brought about low growth and bipolarization,” said Professor Cho Dong-geun of Myongji University during citizens’ forum discussions.

Despite this, the current administration has implemented a series of anti-market regulations, and when signs of failure arise, it has simply blamed the market or the previous Kim Dae-jung administration, said Professor Park Hyo-jong of Seoul National University.

For the last three years, the Korean people have paid an enormous cost to learn that code-driven policies of equity and equality alone can hardly achieve growth, distribution, autonomy or welfare. If the Roh Moo-hyun administration continues to ignore the opinions of the public and experts and sticks to code-oriented logic over the next two years, the Republic of Korea’s costs will increase astronomically. No administration should force the public to bear such a burden.