대통령 4년 연임제 ‘원 포인트’ 개헌론에 대한 비판적 검토

False Diagnosis and Wrong Prescription : A Critical Analysis of President Roh Moo Hyun"s Proposal for ‘Presidential Four-Year Two Term’ Constitutional Revision

&nbsp;&nbsp;In the beginning of 2007, President Roh Moo Hyun proposed what is called ‘Presidential Four-Year Two Term’ Constitutional Revision. However, the opposition parties ignore this initiative mainly because it is arguably motivated by a partisan strategy to give a deep impact on the presidential election 2007 in which the ruling party seems to have a slim chance of win.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In this paper, the author tries to criticise president&quot;s proposal from academic perspectives different from the opposition&quot;s partisan attacks. The thrust of his criticism lies in the false diagnosis and wrong alternatives provided by the President. The President argues that the present ‘Presidential Five-Year One-Term’ system causes, above all, an intolerable inefficiency of government by usually resulting in a sort of ‘divided government’ and ‘Presidential Four-Year Two-Term’ system combined with the coincidence or contiguity of presidential and general elections would cure such a symptom. However, the author points out that the chronical inefficiency of Korean political system stems from confrontational political culture, the deficit of political leadership, election system lacking proportionality rather than the governmental structure and moreover the problem of divided government is inevitable in presidential system as compared to parliamentary system so that the proposed alternative be a wrong answer to the designated diagnosis.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;He concludes that what is required before proposing a sudden agendum of constitutional revision stained with wrong understandings of political reality and constitutional arrangements is to set up political and public spheres to examine what are the problems in the political system and what should be done in different levels of political process.