Industrial unrest worsens in Sri Lanka
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In South Korea, industrial unrest continues to worsen with more unions threatening to walk off the job in protest against government policies, especially Seoul's beef import deal with the US.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Brad Glosserman, Executive Director of the Pacific Forum, Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Hawaii.
GLOSSERMAN: Without question President Lee has plummeted in his popularity, I mean he came into office as this can do figure and basically within 100 days that image had completely evaporated.
I think his popularity figures have gone from something like 52 per cent to under 20 per cent, the lowest ever recorded basically since South Korea has been tracing the popularity of its elected presidents.
LAM: How much of a political threat do you think the current situation might pose to President Lee Myung-bak?
GLOSSERMAN: Well it's clearly a threat, I mean this is a man who is finding his legitimacy undermined. On the other hand there isn't a way to remove him from power, it's a presidential system, he's in for a fixed term of office and it really depends upon whether or not he commits an impeachable offence, and losing popularity and voters losing faith with you doesn't quite qualify.
LAM: Do you think though that the current climate of uncertainty over fuel and food prices that that's being exploited for political gain by the opposition?
GLOSSERMAN: Without question, I mean one of the great problems of South Korean politics is it's a zero-sum mentality on all sides of the political spectrum, and quite frankly President Lee has to worry not only about the left but also about his opponents on the right from other conservatives of his own party.
And consequently there isn't much mood for compromise, when people win elections they tend to take a winner takes all position. And absent that what you end up with is volatile electorates, incredible swings in opinion and very much a situation where much like you have today, where people go to take maximal positions and really don't look for coming up with workable solutions.
LAM: And South Korea's union movement of course has always posed challenges to the government of the day. But do you think South Korean workers are particularly antagonistic towards the current administration?
GLOSSERMAN: Without question, this is a really pro-business administration that has an agenda that is going to be making the country theoretically or at least is designed to make it more business friendly. And you had a real ideological swing with the end of a progressive left government and President Roh Moo-hyun and its replacement by MB, who is very much pro-business.
So what I think you're seeing is a real sense of the less smells blood in the water and they're going to be using both a declining economy, this beef issue and just a general sense of vulnerability to go after a president whose agenda they very much dislike.
LAM: The US and South Korea today resumed talks in Washington over a bilateral trade deal. Just how important is this agreement for President Lee?
GLOSSERMAN: Well if nothing else it gives him a great deal of credibility. The President has decided among other things to make the restoration of relations with the United States a real priority, and almost the anchor of that is going to be the development of this Korea-US Free Trade Agreement. Unfortunately both as a way if you will signaling that desire and trying to push things through prior to his first trip to the United States a couple of weeks ago, he pushed this beef proposal through his own legislature.
Unfortunately the United States has not been terribly sensitive to the political context in which he's acting, and as a result number one I think they misread the sense of what the concessions on the beef deal meant and in addition had the entire free trade agreement has fallen victim to the politics of the 2008 presidential campaign. Now what's happening then is for folks like me who see a very important alliance getting stuck in electoral politics is is that we risk really undermining a very important supporter of the US alliance.
