Word: roh
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...spite of the optimism with which the formation of the Democratic Liberal Party was welcomed four months ago, its fortunes are already going downhill. At the national elections in 1987, President Roh Tae Woo received only 36% of the vote, and his party was stymied for two years by an opposition-controlled national assembly. So when two of the three rival parties joined Roh's group to form the D.L.P., which now holds 218 of the 299 parliamentary seats, it looked as if Roh's promised "democratization" program of liberal reforms would be pushed ahead. Opinion polls showed an approval...
...ruling party was engrossed in its internal strife," said the daily Dong-A Ilbo, and was ignoring domestic affairs. Roh admitted in a speech last week that his administration "has not been able to gain public confidence in the consistency of its policies...
Student leaders charge that Roh is planning to use his parliamentary control to postpone elections, scheduled for 1992, and prolong his rule. There is no evidence to support this so far, and among professional politicians Roh is more often accused of weak leadership. His nickname, "Water," reflects the view that he is a bit slippery and hard to pin down...
...Roh's new team, tentatively called the Democratic Liberal Party, embraces his own Democratic Justice Party, Kim Young Sam's Reunification Democratic Party and Kim Jong Pil's National Democratic Republican Party. This leaves Kim Dae Jung, head of the Party for Peace and Democracy, out in the cold with a mere 71 seats in the 299-seat legislature...
...Jung denounced Roh's gambit as a "political coup d'etat" and demanded a general election, but most South Koreans were not so disgruntled. The country's fractious four-party system is unwieldy and inefficient, and besides, the opposition parties themselves are largely one-man shows. If nothing else, the realignment will reduce South Korea's confusing roster of same-sounding political parties, and perhaps with it, put an end to internecine bickering in the legislature...