The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Chung Hong-won

  • A matter of principle

    A matter of principle

    • Unlike here, people in high offices resign when they err

    Certain developments on the international scene hold significant lessons for Nigeria on the place of principle in public office. Prominent among these morally instructive happenings is the impressive resignation of South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won over his government’s handling of the April 16 sinking of a passenger ferry that caused the death of more than 100 people. More than 300 were said to be missing as a result of the tragedy involving the Sewol passenger ferry that capsized with 476 people on board; many of the passengers were schoolchildren.

    Not only did Mr. Chung apologise for not preventing the tragedy and for not being able to respond properly to it; he movingly declared that the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”. He said:  “I offer my apology for having been unable to prevent this accident from happening and unable to properly respond to it afterwards.”

    It was striking that the PM chose resignation in the face of severe criticism of the government for poor handling of the rescue operation, and despite the fact that all 15 surviving crew members responsible for sailing the vessel were arrested and charged with criminal negligence and abandoning passengers. He was really not under pressure to leave, but he said, “I believed I, as the prime minister, certainly had to take responsibility and resign.” According to him, the right thing “for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.”

    At the level of parallelism, it may not be out of place to reflect on the situation in Nigeria, particularly the ongoing Chibok crisis involving the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls by members of the Islamist terror group Boko Haram and the passionate public campaign for government intervention that is yet to yield the desired result. It is noteworthy that there have been calls for the resignation of President Goodluck Jonathan for alleged tardiness and ineffectiveness, which is a most unlikely event in the circumstances, given the reality that the politically powerful in the country hardly ever give a thought to the possibility of quitting office even in the messiest of scandals.

    Deserving of notice is another story of resignation in high places, this time in the United States of America where Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned amid a scandal over delayed care and falsified records at the agency’s hospitals. A recent report found veterans at an Arizona hospital waited an average of 115 days for an initial appointment, prompting an uproar that resulted in the voluntary exit of Mr Shinseki, a retired four-star general wounded in Vietnam. Shinseki said, “I apologise as the senior leader of Veterans Affairs,” referring to the  US veterans’ health system which  serves about nine million former US military service members, but with  resources strained by the ageing population of Korean and Vietnam War veterans as well as the great influx of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

    It is food for thought that he reportedly told President Barack Obama that the organisation needed “new leadership” to address its problems. It is worth mentioning that although he was facing a storm, he could have chosen to stay on, which he evidently considered dishonourable.

    Significantly, there is an example from Africa. In Malawi, economic planning minister Goodall Gondwe resigned over treason charges against him and 10 others in connection with a 2012 suspected coup plot against incumbent President Joyce Banda. He said:  “I have resigned from cabinet today for obvious reasons. I can’t continue to serve in cabinet when I am facing charges.”  This instance is also especially relevant to Nigeria where top ranking government officials treat serious accusations against them as amusing distractions. Specifically, in recent times former aviation minister Stella Oduah, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, have displayed condemnable arrogance of power in response to grave allegations of official misconduct. The country’s power elite obviously need lessons in principled perspective.

  • South Korea president in ferry disaster apology

    South Korea president in ferry disaster apology

    South Korean President Park Geun-hye has apologised over the ferry disaster, in a statement to cabinet shown on national television.

    Ms Park said that the government had failed to prevent the disaster and bungled its emergency response.

    Her apology comes amid ongoing work to retrieve bodies from the sunken hull.

    The ferry sank with 476 people aboard – most of them high school students and teachers – off South Korea on 16 April. A total of 174 were rescued.

    The remainder have been confirmed dead or missing presumed drowned.

    Officials have retrieved almost 200 bodies and divers are continuing to search for those still unaccounted for.

    “I don’t know how to apologise for the failure to prevent this accident, and for the insufficient first response,” Ms Park said in the statement. I am sorry to the people and heavy-hearted that many precious lives were lost.”

    Ms Park’s apology comes amid mounting public anger and criticism over the disaster. Most of those on board were on a trip from Danwon high school in Ansan, south of Seoul.

    President Park had earlier paid her respects at a memorial altar set up near the school. Local media reports said she was heckled by angry family members.

    Attention has focused on why so few people were evacuated from the stricken vessel, and on the possibly negligence of the captain and crew.

    On Sunday, South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won offered his resignation over the disaster.

    In her statement, Ms Park said she would create a new government agency to handle large-scale accidents, Yonhap news agency reported.

    The national safety ministry would also be placed under the prime minister’s office, the agency said.

    It is not yet clear what caused the incident but investigations are focusing on whether modifications made to the vessel made it more unstable.The ferry was also reported to be carrying cargo more than three times its approved amount. The coastguard rescued the captain from the listing vessel

    All 15 crew members involved in the navigation of the ferry are now in custody, facing criminal negligence charges.

    .

  • Lessons from South Korea

    Lessons from South Korea

    In the aftermath of last week’s resignation of South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won following the unfortunate Sewol ferry tragedy, I found myself compelled to join the debate earlier stoked by my colleague Segun Ayobolu on the cultural/ethical dimensions of the Nigerian dilemma. Of particular interest to me in the context of the current frenetic pace to rework the country’s political architecture, is what I consider as the exaggerated expectations from the possible restructuring of the polity in the absence of fundamental attitudinal re-orientation by the leaders and the led.
    The story of how the South Korean ferry with 476 people aboard – most of them students and teachers – sank on 16 April is by now familiar. Despite the scores of questions still unanswered as to how and why the ferry could have gone down, the gaps in the management of the rescue operations which hint at systemic failures, many of them as outrageous as they are inexcusable perhaps made the resignation inevitable. Not when the slip-shod manner with which officials handled the operations had warranted a stinging rebuke from the opposition which described government as “thoroughly irresponsible” and a “cowardly evasion” of responsibility.
    The big news is that the Prime Minister Chung Hong-won had by the weekend thrown in of the towel. Not for him the resort to the blame-game. Hardly time to go fishing for a fall-guy either. As leader of government, the minister obviously knew that the buck stopped on his desk for which no thousand rationalisations, no matter how plausible, could ever assuage. He simply did what had to be done, first by apologising to the people, before quitting his post.
    His brief televised statement said it all: “The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.  On behalf of the government, I apologise for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster”.
    He would equally note that – “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”
    But then, top of it was his unmistakeable sense of personal responsibility when he averred that the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”.
    By the way, he will remain on the post to clear the mess with the rescue job still largely undone.
    It is just as well that we celebrate the exemplary act by the leader of government business admitting the culpability of the government which he led in the making of tragedy.  Not only would such acts seem utterly inconceivable here, to contemplate what the South Korean leader did in these parts would be akin to a grave act of folly. Not when there are ethnic and religious factors to be thrown into the mix; countless enemies that could be held for blame; innumerable reasons why the lone official couldn’t be expected to carry the burden of a sick nation; or even when other officials, known to be guilty of more atrocious dereliction of duties, are still in holding on in public office!
    I have argued elsewhere that there can be no understating the need to restructure the current dysfunctional political structure as basis for the elixir of a stable, prosperous future that we badly crave, and also as a necessary step to guarantee its very survival. Today, I would add that without a complete reordering of our values as a nation, that future which we badly crave stands imperilled. The point has been well made by my colleague Segun Ayobolu in his back page column of penultimate Saturday, where he posits that “When the prevalent values in a society promote impunity, corruption, inefficiency, lawlessness and nepotism, these vices will be subversive of any structure no matter how expertly constructed”.
    Clearly, while the quest to farm out a new political architecture would be desirable, the part that has not received equal and commensurate attention is how to  erect our notion of ideal society on the wobbly substructure of poor citizenship culture.
    Part of the tragedies of modern times is that nothing is held as sacrosanct – good and bad have since become relative. From the school pupils who cheat in public examinations to the public official caught stealing public funds, there are no longer abiding standards in public morality. A public official abuses his office but rather than hide his head in shame, he or she goes to make a plea of self-justification.
    Once upon a time, public service used to be exactly that – public office; today, it is neither defined as public in the real sense of it, or service in any shape or form. It is today a veritable mission in self-help, an institution where occupants not only live large but would also insist on blurring the dividing line between what is private and what is public. The situation explains why a serving minister would cause the parastatals under her to buy armoured cars for her exclusive use; another would allegedly gobble N10 billion of taxpayers money to hire private jets; it is at the heart of the immigration tragedy in which 19 Nigerians would perish simply because one minister could not organise a recruitment test after collecting money from the applicants to defray the cost of recruitment.
    I ask, what difference would a restructured polity make to all of these? I stand to be educated.

  • South Korea’s PM resigns over ferry mishap

    South Korean Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won, has resigned amid criticism of the government’s handling of the sinking of a passenger ferry.

    He said the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night,” Mr Chung will stay in his post until the disaster is under control.

    The BBC reports that Sewol ferry with 476 people aboard – most of them students and teachers – sank off South Korea on April 16.

    Officials have confirmed 187 died, but scores are missing presumed drowned.

    Furious relatives have repeatedly criticised what they see as the slowness of the recovery operation.

    “The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet,” Mr. Chung said in a brief televised statement.

    “On behalf of the government, I apologise for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster.”

    He added: “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”