By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter

The National Assembly voted down a motion that calls for the dismissal of Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung in a secret ballot during a plenary session Thursday.

Of 293 lawmakers who cast their ballots, 158 voted against the motion, while 131 voted for it. The remaining four cast invalid ballots.

The ruling Uri Party and the progressive minor Democratic Labor Party (DLP) flexed joint muscles during the procedure, frustrating the largest opposition Grand National Party (GNP), which submitted the motion and pushed hard for its passage.

The conservative GNP has been demanding resignation of the defense minister, claiming that the head of national defense should take responsibility for what it called the overall lax discipline of the Army, including a recent shooting spree.

A soldier at a guard post (GP) inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) went on the rampage on June 19 ``in retaliation for being bullied and verbally harassed by seniors,’’ killing eight other soldiers.

The United Liberal Democrats, with three seats, and the Democratic Party, with 10 seats, sided with the GNP, which has 125 seats. The total number of lawmakers from the three opposition parties, however, fell short of a majority in the 299-member legislature.

President Roh Moo-hyun has rebuffed the opposition parties’ calls to dismiss the minister, arguing Yoon is the most competent defense minister able to carry on military reform. He also said the GNP was only trying to hold sway over political situation by forcing the defense minister step down.

Before the voting, the ruling party, with 146 seats, feared that possible passage of the motion would result in an early lame duck situation for Roh, who is now in the third year of his presidency.

But the DLP, which criticized the GNP for turning the military reform into political issue, threw its weight of 10 seats behind the ruling party and helped the motion be voted down.

The vote became an about-turn for the ruling party, which has been suffering setbacks from a series bad fortunes such as humiliating defeat in the by-elections on April 30, scandals involving failed development projects of state-owned firms and continuous internal discord over the party policy line.

For the GNP, however, the failure to push through the dismissal of the defense minister has come as another blow. The main opposition party has been plagued by a number of internal feuds regarding the party leadership and leakage of an inside reports on its alleged illegal election campaigns.

Observers predict that the joint move of the ruling party and the progressive DLP might speed up passage of remaining two ``reform bills’’ the conservative parties have been vigorously blocking until now. One is a bill aimed at reforming private schools system and the other at substituting or abolishing anti-communist National Security Law.

The ruling party and the DLP also cooperated in passing a bill on government reorganization before the motion on defense minister.

GNP lawmakers’ strong protest against the bill brought the session to a repeated halt, despite calls for order from Assembly Speaker Kim Won-ki.

But Rep. Lee Young-soon of the DLP stole the podium to present the bill after a brief halt, protected by other DLP lawmakers who set up a human screen around her. With GNP lawmakers abstaining, the bill passed the legislature by 159-11.

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr