[Editorial] Don’t veto the bill

President Lee Myung-bak has until Friday to make a decision on whether to sign into law or veto a bill on the appointment of an independent counsel empowered to look into a land-purchase scandal involving him, his son and one of his top security service officers. The bill, passed by the National Assembly earlier in the month, will be made into law automatically if no action is taken by Friday.

In the past, lawmakers close to the president and the minister of justice have hinted at a presidential veto, claiming that the bill would be ruled unconstitutional for being politically biased. They took issue with the selection by the main opposition party of two independent-counsel nominees for appointment by the president.

The lawmakers and the justice minister had grounds to make such a claim. It was the first time a political party had selected nominees for the post of independent counsel. In the past, either the chief justice of the Supreme Court or the president of the Korean Bar Association has been given the privilege of making such recommendations.

Not this time. The ruling Saenuri Party, noting that the president and his son were involved in the scandal, agreed to a proposal that the main opposition party be given the right to nomination to shield the nomination process from the influence of the president.

The case dates back to May last year, when Lee bought plots of land in the name of his son, Si-hyung, on the outskirts of Seoul, planning to build his post-retirement residence. The purchase allegedly breached the law on property transactions stipulating the contracts be signed by the real purchaser.

Even more controversial was a claim that the president made an illicit gain from his joint purchase of the plots with the Presidential Security Service, which was planning to construct a building for its detail in the residential compound. The then deputy chief of the Presidential Security Service was allegedly involved in the purchase.

The prosecution, which had started to look into the case in May this year, was accused of conducting a shoddy investigation, when it closed the case, clearing all suspects of charges the next month. This omission triggered a bipartisan agreement on the reopening of the case by an independent counsel.

When a weekly Cabinet meeting is held at the presidential office on Tuesday, the justice minister is certain to make a case in favor of a presidential veto against the bill. But the president will be well advised to keep himself from succumbing to the temptation to send the bill back to the National Assembly to deliberate on it again and put it to another vote. He has no better choice than to sign it into law.

True, the National Assembly would have a slimmer chance of overriding the presidential veto, given that its passage would this time require the approval of more than two-thirds of the vote, not a majority, with the participation of more than half of its members in the vote. But a presidential veto will reinforce public suspicions that the president breached the law with his son and sought an illegal benefit from the property transactions.

His veto, if exercised, would undoubtedly strain relations between the president, who has entered the homestretch to his retirement and the ruling party, which would have to weigh its political ramifications against the upcoming presidential election. The possibility could not be entirely ruled out that the ruling party, under mounting public pressure, would join the opposition in overriding the veto.

This is not to say that the president will have to give up his right to bring the case to the Constitutional Court for a ruling.

When President Lee decides to sign the bill into law, as he should do, the opposition party will have to take extra care to ensure that nominees will be selected from among legal experts deemed politically unbiased.

The selection of nominees for the post of independent counsel in this manner could serve as a precedent for future cases involving the president. Should the bill permitting one party to select nominees be ruled unconstitutional, it could be altered by letting the opposition party select them in the name of the National Assembly speaker.