In a desperate attempt to win over the Koreans, President Lee myung-bak whose approval rating fell to the 20 percent range from nearly 80 percent three months ago has granted pardons to some 2.8 million people, mostly minor offenders, on the occasion of his 100th day in office.
As this news article notes:
This is the nation's third largest pardon, behind the 5.5 million under former President Kim Dae-jung in March of 1998 and 4.2 million under former President Roh Moo-hyun in August of 2005.
However former politicians, businessmen and other high-ranking officials convicted of crimes were not included among those pardoned.
The beneficiaries include 52 elderly inmates aged over 70, 12 physically challenged prisoners, 21 inmates with serious diseases and 56 in prison workshops for not being able to pay fines of less than 1 million won.
About 2.5 million people will be allowed to drive their car again as their ``penalty points'' will be cancelled.
The move aims to help those who have to make a living by driving a car, a Ministry of Justice official said. Excluded from the pardon were those convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol more than twice, drivers causing accidents in which people died, and hit-and-run perpetrators.
I am sure eveyone can see through his gimmicks.
Anyway, one lesson he has learned is that the President of a country is not the CEO of a company. One cannot bulldoze ones way around in democracy!
2 comments:
I doubt that he has learned the lesson. I think that he lacks the ability to run this country (I even doubt his ability as a CEO, since all he did as the CEO of Hyundai was to carry out orders from the late Chung Joo-Young.)
I really hope that he realizes what is the real problem and make necessary changes. Oherwise, he might be forced to step down by the people. What a mess for all!
His approval rate is 17.1%. Other poll shows 17.2%. It has been only 100 days since he took the office and his approval rate plummeted from 80% to 17%. It is almost impossibel to run a country with this low approval rate....
HOW DO YOU DO... KOREANS
Intelligent design
The Korean government are forward thinkers. Some bright spark at the internal affairs office realised that instead of buying costly street sweepers they could just use bored middle aged women. Thusly every Korean mother or aunt is bowlegged, shaped like a question mark and smells of bins. But those street corners, wow.
...MORE AT lifestyleguides.blogspot.com
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