Does Pres Lee dream of Putin? - Weekly Kontext

Why it matters: President Lee’s constitutional-reform feelers look less like a Putin-style bid to entrench himself than like the familiar last resort of a president whose approval has collapsed — and the leadership Minjoo has just elected leaves him weaker inside his own party than his critics assume.

Does President Lee Dream of Putin?

President Lee’s feelers about constitutional reform alarmed some.

“Nonconsecutive” is the trigger word here. So far, most discussion of constitutional reform has focused on whether to allow “consecutive” reelection. Mr Lee could not run in the next election either way, even if his party did change the constitution: the document explicitly exempts the sitting president from any change to presidential terms.

Allowing “nonconsecutive” reelection, though, would change the game. Critics fear Mr Lee might be consulting Vladimir Putin’s playbook for a way back to power. He might run a right-hand man — former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, say — in the next election, they argue, and seek reelection after that.

These concerns are far-fetched. Historically, constitutional reform tends to be the last resort of weakened presidents facing the end of their terms. Roh Moo-hyun tried it to turn things around after his approval ratings fell below 15%. Park Geun-hye did the same amid the scandal that led to her impeachment. All failed.

The interesting deviation is Minjoo’s own attempt to revise the constitution — twice. The first came in the early days of the Moon administration, the second just four months ago. I read them as a display of confidence, that Minjoo is now the dominant force in society, and of a desire to make that permanent by allowing reelection. Both failed, anyway.

Mr Lee’s pitch this time follows the historical pattern. His net approval tumbled below zero last week.

The public has been unenthusiastic about constitutional reform even when an administration was popular. No reason to believe it will be now.

Yet Another Pyrrhic Victory

In the South Korean political system, where parties are structurally weak with shallow grassroots, the question of who will lead the ruling party comes down to little more than the president’s preference.

Kim Min-seok, Mr Lee’s guy in the Minjoo leadership contest, was struggling against the incumbent party chief, Jung Chung-rae, until Honam returned the favor for the semiconductor pork barrel. That alone underlines how weak Mr Lee’s grip on the party is — another Pyrrhic victory in a growing collection.

It gets worse when it comes to the rest of the party leadership. Three of the five elected executive council members_최고위원 are considered pro-Jung. The other two, described in the press as pro-Lee, wear the label lightly.

The only contender who could safely be called pro-Lee was Kim Yong, whose relationship with the president goes back to Mr Lee’s years as mayor of Seongnam. Kim Yong is waiting for a Supreme Court decision on charges of taking kickbacks on Mr Lee’s behalf when Mr Lee was mayor. Like his boss, he saw running for office as the only way forward while facing charges — the only difference being that Kim Yong failed where Mr Lee succeeded. His defeat stings more given that two other candidates dropped out mid-race and urged party members to vote for him instead.

Above all, even the new party leader can hardly be counted as pro-Lee. Though a year younger than Mr Lee, Kim Min-seok has been playing this game far longer than the president: after bursting into politics as a young lawmaker at the age of 32, he spent nearly two decades struggling to crawl back to Yeouido.

He was notorious for switching allegiances to win power — hence the nickname “party hopper_철새” — and there’s little reason to expect his allegiance to Mr Lee to last long.

After all, much of Mr Lee’s political coalition looks less like an alliance than an “axis of convenience.”