The three leading political parties on Monday agreed to extend the period of the parliamentary state audit, seeking to make up for losses caused by the ruling party‘s boycott last week.

“We have decided to extend the state audit period by three days, putting off its closing date from Oct. 15 to 19,” said Reps. Kim Do-eup, Park Wan-ju and Kim Kwan-young, the respective vice floor leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party, The Minjoo Party of Korea and People’s Party in a joint statement.

The three held a luncheon meeting Monday, the day after Saenuri had announced an end to its five-day boycott to the state audit in protest against the Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun. The ruling conservative camp’s claim was that Chung, whose former affiliation was with the Minjoo Party, accepted the floor vote on the opposition‘s call for the dismissal of a disputed agriculture minister with bias.

Saenuri chief Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, with the support of his fellow party clique members standing close to President Park Geun-hye, had initiated a hunger strike, but decided to end his demonstration late Sunday.

“All three parties agreed that the top priority task now is to maximize the productivity of the state audit,” said the Saenuri whip.

“The party representatives of each parliamentary committee will come up with flexible schedules during the upcoming two weeks.“

His Minjoo Party counterpart Rep. Park also claimed that the three-day prolongation should be enough to round off the much-delayed audit.

But rival parties continued to stand at odds over the Saenuri’s pledge to pass a revision bill of the National Assembly Act to reinforce the neutrality obligation of the parliamentary speaker.

”Our stance is that (the revision) is necessary to promote parliamentary democracy,“ said Saenuri floor leader Kim, claiming that the runner-up opposition People‘s Party had expressed its approval.

But the Minjoo Party reiterated that the resolution for the minister’s dismissal was legitimate and that its passage could be seen as neither a procedural flaw, nor a violation of the speaker‘s neutrality obligation.

By Bae Hyun-jung ()


koreaherald@heraldcorp.com