S. Korea Passes Election Law That Favors Rural Areas

Without actually voting, President Roh Tae Woo’s ruling party rammed through the National Assembly early today a new law that sets up single-member constituencies, weighted in favor of rural voters, for the new assembly elections scheduled for late next month.

Both major opposition parties tried to obstruct passage of the law by keeping it from coming to a vote. They contended that it contains “poisonous clauses” that will lead to rigged elections.

Scuffling broke out as the ruling Democratic Justice Party used its majority in the outgoing National Assembly to railroad the bill through two committees Monday without a vote, and again through an extraordinary plenary session that extended into this morning. At 2:10 a.m., the Speaker proclaimed the legislation passed. Opposition lawmakers surrounding the podium then threw copies of the bill and other papers at him.

Law Criticized

Opposition parties complained that the law fails to allow observers to watch as members of the armed forces cast absentee ballots at military bases. They also criticized it for requiring that absentee ballots be mixed in with other ballots before they are counted, and for fixing a limit on the number of speeches that any candidate may deliver in the course of the campaign.

The opposition Party for Peace and Democracy said that passage of the law “shows that the government has not changed at all and is determined to carry out another rigged election.”

A spokesman for the ruling party said it had pushed the measure through only after more than two months of squabbling within the ranks of the opposition had made it impossible for the law to be adopted through the usual means of consultations and compromise.

Sets the Stage

Despite opposition criticism, the new law sets the stage for the voters--for the first time since 1970--to determine directly whether any party will have a majority in the unicameral National Assembly.

Although the law retains a so-called national constituency system, from which seats will be apportioned to each of the parties, it will no longer be possible for any party to gain a majority in the assembly without also winning more than half of the seats at stake in the direct elections in the individual constituencies.

Under the present system, adopted under martial law in 1980, a party winning a plurality as small as 42% of the directly elected seats is assured of getting majority control of the assembly by being assigned a bonus two-thirds of the seats from the national constituency pool. The new law cuts the bonus distribution for a plurality winner to 50% and reduces the number of seats distributed indirectly from one-third of the total to one-quarter.

Now, only by winning a minimum of 50.4% of the popularly contested races can any party gain control of the legislature.

Represents a Compromise

The new law also represents a compromise with the opposition, which had insisted on the new single-seat districts. Earlier, the Democratic Justice Party had proposed a mixture of districts containing one to three seats.

President Roh’s party, however, rejected opposition demands for greater representation in the new National Assembly from urban areas, where the opposition traditionally has had its greatest strength.

Only 77 seats, or 34.4% of the direct-ballot races, were allocated to Seoul, Pusan, Inchon, Taegu and Kwangju, where 11,506,331, or 45.4%, of the voters live.

The new assembly will have 299 seats, or 23 more than the present assembly, with 224 members elected directly from one-seat constituencies and the rest distributed to each party from the national constituency.

A senior ruling party official told Korean reporters that the election will be held around April 20. At least three weeks, he said, will be needed to set up party chapters in each constituency before launching an 18-day campaign as prescribed in the law.

The election will bring to a climax a political drama that began last June when former President Chun Doo Hwan picked Roh as his successor, who was to be elected in a rubber-stamp electoral college. Street protests erupted across the country, persuading Roh, and later Chun, to accept opposition demands for major democratic reforms, including direct election of the president.

Roh won that direct election Dec. 16, but only by a plurality of 36.6%. His two main opposition rivals, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, split 55% of the votes.

A majority victory in the forthcoming National Assembly election would give Roh an extra badge of legitimacy and enable him to govern without resorting to a coalition-like government.

With the opposition still divided among two major parties and a minor one, a victory by the Democratic Justice Party is considered a strong possibility.