Welcome to BASE21

Translated by Modest Park
greece7@hotmail.com

The Seoul District Court has given "The Blacklist Campaign" from last year's general election a guilty verdict. "The Blacklist Campaign" was established on January 12th, 2001 by Civil Action for the 2000 General Election (CAGE), and was designed to release a list of politicians who were not qualified to run in that election. CAGE consists of 412 Korean domestic civil organizations. The general election day was on April 13th, 2000 and CAGE held this campaign for three months.

The criteria for sorting out politicians who were not eligible for election candidacy were: 1) people who have or are currently involved in corruption, 2) people who have violated or are violating the election law, 3) people who have been involved in a military coup or have had an anti-human rights career, 4) people who are not diligently carrying out their parliamentary job, and so on. In sum, CAGE aims to:

- Eliminate corrupt politicians
- Amend the parts of the election law that deny the people their fundamental political rights
- Organize nation-wide campaigns against old, erroneous political habits and election customs
- Gather international support for CAGE

After the general election, in spite of the fact that the contribution of the campaign had been recognized as a result of the strong participation of the public, the prosecutor filed charges against the leaders of CAGE. Six leaders among the accused CAGE members, who organized the campaign in Seoul, were sentenced and ordered to pay a heavy fine. The court said that this social campaign violated the operating election law. CAGE refused to accept the decision of the Seoul District Court, so it decided to appeal to the High Court.

At the same time, the members of CAGE decided to send a petition to the Constitutional Court. However, on August 30th, 2001, the decision of the Constitutional Court was in favor of the Seoul District Court.

From what point of view has the campaign violated the operating law? The court listed the following reasons:

▷ The selection of persons on the blacklist was biased because only a small number of representatives from NGOs participated in this selection process. The court insisted that the process of selection was undemocratic.

▷ The standards of selection lacked justice and rationality.

▷ The investigation for selecting persons on the blacklist was carried out only for a month or so, and lacked accurate information and reliability.

▷ Regardless of the ultimate aim of the campaign, the "Defeating Election" campaign against a certain candidate resulted in making a favorable circumstance for an opposite candidate.

▷ In general, people had a strong aversion to the "Defeating Election" campaign, which resulted in a decrease in the number of participants voting in the 16th general election.

What made the people involved in the campaign unable to accept the decision of the court? They insisted the decision was based on a lack of understanding of freedom of expression, the basic concept of the constitution, which was very disappointing.

▷ The ultimate aim of the campaign was to defeat incompetent and corrupt candidates.

▷ The campaign appealed to the public in a non-violent and peaceful manner and the campaign gained about 68% of the public's approval.

▷ The verdict of guilty handed down against the "Defeating Election" campaign resulted in a violation of freedom of speech and the right to vote, which are the backbone of constitutional law.

▷ The prosecutor said that the campaign brought a strong aversion from the public.

However, people are disgusted by corruption in politics and the idea that money can make anything possible. People have seen too many cases of an incompetent candidate winning an election because of bribery. The attendance rate of members of parliament is 10% below average. There are very few MPs who can bring forth a bill during their term. All of this brought about the birth of CAGE and its campaign.

The People's Solidarity For Participatory Democracy (PSPD) makes its stand against the prosecution of the court. Moreover, its petition to the High Court turned in favor of convicting CAGE. PSPD believes that the decision violated the basic concept of the constitution, which is the freedom of expression. It is disappointed that the court did not consider these factors enough, and that the decision of the High Court resulted in its remaining as an idle spectator, without either stopping more corruption or making a better and fairer election environment. However, PSPD keeps its hopes high that the decision of the High Court will bring about the right and fair decision later, so that it can make a step forward towards "clean politics."