Democratic Party of Korea Chairman Jung Chung-rae said Sunday that the party will make "the best choice by gathering the collective will of the public, party members, and lawmakers" on the timing for processing the special counsel bill targeting allegations of fabricated investigations and indictments under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration.
The remarks are interpreted as signaling that the bill will be processed after the local elections, following opinion-gathering, given that President Lee Jae-myung had stated it "must go through public deliberation."
Speaking to reporters after a campaign rally at Keunsijang Market in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, Jung explained, "Since there was also a Blue House briefing yesterday, the party and the presidential office (the Democratic Party and the Blue House) need to coordinate."
Jung said that regarding the special counsel bill, the party will gather the views not only of lawmakers through a general assembly but also of rank-and-file party members. "We will gather lawmakers' opinions through the general assembly, and also ask party members for their views to judge what would be best," he stressed.
President Lee Jae-myung said regarding the "fabricated indictment special counsel" that "the ruling Democratic Party should make a judgment on the specific timing and procedures after going through a process of gathering public opinion and deliberation," Blue House Political Affairs Secretary Hong Ik-pyo conveyed in a briefing the previous day.
Jung also raised his voice, saying the need to pass the special counsel bill remains fully justified. "If the political prosecutors under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, who were obsessed with killing political rivals, suppressing the opposition, and killing Lee Jae-myung, tried to indict and punish through false fabrication, that itself is a crime," he said. "Prosecution officials who participated in that crime must rightfully be punished in the name of the law."
He continued, "If fabricated indictments and false fabrications are proven, the suspects and defendants at the time who suffered from false fabrications must naturally be remedied. This is the embodiment of the spirit of the Republic of Korea's Constitution and the normalization of judicial justice."
He added, "As stated in Article 11 of the Constitution, all citizens are equal before the law. If there are citizens who have suffered unjustly from fabricated indictments, whether an ordinary citizen, a mayor, a district head, a lawmaker, or a president, everyone must be equally remedied—that is the spirit of the Constitution."
