Anti-hammer rule

A bipartisan National Assembly panel has come up with rules to make legislative procedures democratic and violence-free. They hope that the new rules, called the Physical Clash Prevention Accord, will lead to the disappearance of physical violence and the use of dangerous items inside the chamber.
The rule, which is likely to get endorsement at the National Assembly this year, is to remove on-and-off physical clashes inside the chamber. Lawmakers and their aides sometimes mobilized hammers, chisels and electric saws to thwart railroading of controversial bills.
Lawmakers had often occupied the podium of the National Assembly to block the passage of bills. The six-member panel agreed on preventing the Speaker from wielding his arbitrary power to railroad controversial bills through the National Assembly.
The Speaker will no longer be able to put bills to a vote without agreement from all parties involved. He can use his authority only during national crises, including war, natural disasters and threats to national security.
A New Year budget bill will be automatically put to a plenary session 48 hours before Dec.2, the legal deadline for passage, even without an inter-party accord. This will end chronic deadlock over the national budget.
Under the fast-track rule, the deadline for reviewing bills will be legally set when there is a request from 60 percent of the lawmakers.
Each legislative subcommittee must complete the review of the bills within 180 days. The legal affairs panel must complete the deliberation of the bills in 60 days.
A lawmaker will be able to make a long and tedious speech to use up time to block a vote under the filibuster system. This will be possible at the request of 20 percent of the lawmakers. But the filibustering must stop when 60 percent of the lawmakers demands so.
The self-rule is to prevent the high-handedness of the majority party and the use of physical violence by the minority parties.
The rule will enable the majority party having more than 180 lawmakers or 60 percent of the 299-seat National Assembly to pass bills, at least theoretically, according to their own schedule and without physical confrontation.
It will become illegal to block the entry of lawmakers into the National Assembly. Also to be banned is the unauthorized occupation of the seats of the Speaker and chairmen of standing committees.
At this stage, no party is sure of controlling more than 60 percent of the total after the next election in April.
Rule-breaking lawmakers will have their allowances halved when they get warnings from the ethics committee. Payment of allowances will stop for three months when rule-breaking legislators receive heavy disciplinary measures.
The penalty code is so symbolic that it is doubtful whether lawmakers will fully comply with the rule.
One day after parties agreed on the no-violence rules, opposition lawmakers occupied a subcommittee to block the passage of a bill to raise the TV subscription fee for KBS. The occupation raises doubt whether the lawmakers will abide by the rules they crafted.
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