Floor leaders face hurdles in budget review discussion

Floor leaders of the two major political parties faced major hurdles during their meeting yesterday to iron out differences over next year`s budget allocation process as well as the Sejong City development project.

The budget that is waiting to be distributed by the National Assembly for next year sums up to 291.8 trillion won ($251.85 billion).

Their discussion also focused on creating a special committee for the Constitutional amendment and the restructuring of administrative zones.

"The reason for holding the meeting is because the parliament is currently in a complicated state with various issues at stake. In particular, several parliamentary committees are not even taking part in proceeding with next year`s budget review process," Grand National Party floor leader Ahn Sang-soo said at the meeting.



The main opposition Democratic Party floor leader Lee Kang-rae, however, made clear that the meeting was not set up to develop an agreement between the two but to discuss the overall operational process of the National Assembly, on events including the river project`s budget, the Sejong City project, the recently passed media laws and the Yongsan incident that claimed six lives.

The meeting was organized after the opposition parties refused to take part in the budget review session due to their objection over allotting money to the government-pushed four-river restoration project.

They are also asking for the government to stick to the original plan for the Sejong City project of relocating 13 government bodies in Seoul and surrounding Gyeonggi Province to the city in Yeongi-Gongju of South Chuncheong Province.

The ruling GNP has insisted that the National Assembly`s budget and account review session should be completed by Dec. 9, whereas the DP is requesting that the parliament opens an extra parliamentary session next month for further debate. Opposition lawmakers say some urgent issues like the four-river restoration scheme and the Sejong City development project must be tabled before budget distribution.

The parliamentary land, transport and marine affairs committee -- a group that must approve the launch of the river project -- has already skipped its scheduled account and budget review session, postponing it to later this week.

The land and transport committee, however, is not the only one that has run into obstacles in the budget allocation process.

The culture, broadcasting and communications committee is struggling to review and allocate next year`s budget with the major political parties still debating the media-related laws unilaterally passed by the GNP in July.

The education and science committee even failed to fix a date for budget review, due to the controversy involving the release of the high school`s college entrance exam score rankings. It was revealed later by a GNP lawmaker that the rankings included the scores of students who did not even apply for the college entrance exam.

Should this situation continue, the operation of the special committee on budget and accounts, which plays the role of final decision-maker, will most likely be crippled.

"We can`t go forward with the budget review process with the insufficient data over the river project which is currently made available to us," Lee said ahead of the floor leaders` meeting yesterday.

(sharon@heraldm.com)







By Cho Ji-hyun