The haggling over a few ministries in the proposed government restructuring plan between the Lee Myung-bak camp and the prospective opposition is infuriating. If the ministries of unification, maritime affairs and fisheries, and gender equality and family are abolished, will the functions they handle disappear? If the proposed abolition and merger of ministries is dismissed overnight in the face of objection from the prospective opposition, was it proposed halfheartedly for the sake of negotiation?
If it insists on keeping the government structure as is, the majority party should issue a statement taking responsibility for the budget needed for big government. Unless they are former activists who never had a proper job and never paid tax money out of their own pockets, they should be aware that the money does not fall from heaven.
The prospective opposition should therefore frankly tell the taxpayers, "Don't grumble, pay a lot of tax and fill the iron rice bowls of civil servants," or at least apologize for the inconvenience. The Lee camp, too, has tended to put forth its ideas and proposals in a bombastic manner and then quietly withdrew them soon after. They should not have hyped them so much in the first place; even many good materials got spoiled that way.
It is dismaying that fractious and self-seeking politicians are left to haggle over the momentous national project of trimming the bloated government, while the taxpayers, the clients of public services, are left out. The politicians are bent on carving out the choice parts of government and realign them as each side sees fit. Their bickering is an intolerable affront to the taxpayers, the people who should be the sovereign power.
The Lee Myung-bak camp and the prospective opposition should stop their behind-the-scenes bargaining, make the matter a general election pledge and refer it to the public for choice. What's the big problem with running a vice ministerial administration without Cabinet ministers for a few months? Tell the people why big government is bad and why small government is good and ask them for their views. If the public agrees in the April general election, we can have a small government; if not, we'll maintain the status quo. In either case, the taxpayers will take responsibility for the outcome.
Small government has public support and is fully feasible. Stingy about the indispensable political cost of bringing public opinion on its side, however, the incoming administration has left it to the Transition Committee to fight for government restructuring. The Lee team, consisting of academics, public officials and specialists, and the Grand National Party basically fall short in understanding the political dynamics of the broad ruling camp. A victory over shrewd criminals of political dynamics can be guaranteed by the strategic mobility of winning public opinion; it cannot be gotten free without sweat and sincerity.
"Small government, large market,” that is the issue. Nonetheless, the forces of misrule that boosted the number of civil servants by 100,000, with their insistence on high tax and lax management, oppose it. The people who expanded the national debt astronomically; rejected the privatization of public enterprises; subsidized people who beat soldiers at random in protests against the new U.S. Forces Korea base in Pyeongtaek; brought despair to senior citizens who barely managed to buy their own homes and to young college graduates alike; and are nevertheless developing a huge village for Roh Moo-hyun and his family; and the bureaucrats who are busy shifting responsibility for the destruction of the Namdaemun or South Gate: these people shamelessly rise up against small government. If Lee’s team is unable to defeat the challenge, it has no future. If Lee can't do it, the fight must be taken to the electorate in April.