Moon set to hold Cabinet meeting to promulgate prosecution reform legislation

President Moon Jae-in, in his final days in office, is set to hold his last Cabinet meeting Tuesday, in a bid to promulgate two controversial bills on prosecution reform.

The Cabinet meeting will be held at 2 p.m., hours after the ruling Democratic Party (DP) railroaded the last-remaining bill on prosecution reform through the National Assembly amid opposition protest, completing its push to reduce and ultimately remove the prosecution’s investigative powers.

One of the laws is aimed at limiting the scope of the prosecution’s supplementary investigations, while the other is to reduce the prosecution’s investigative powers to only two types of crimes — corruption and economic crimes — from the current six before removing them completely.

Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting had been originally scheduled for 10:00 a.m. but was pushed back.

The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) has called for Moon to use a veto on the laws, but Moon is widely expected to promulgate them, as the laws were a result of a compromise deal between the two main parties, Cheong Wa Dae officials said.

The DP and the PPP have been wrangling for weeks over the bills on prosecution reform, as the DP has insisted they are necessary to ensure the prosecution does not abuse its investigative powers for political purposes, while the PPP has countered they will leave the people with fewer means to seek justice for crimes.

The two sides reached a compromise deal under which the prosecution’s investigative powers would be reduced from six crime types to two before being removed completely, but the PPP backtracked following criticism that lawmakers colluded to shield themselves from prosecution investigations, as the agreement calls for stripping the prosecution of its right to investigate election crimes.

The prosecution again implored Moon to use his veto to stop the legislation from becoming law.

“We earnestly appeal to the president to exercise the right to demand reconsideration as the guardian of the rule of law and democracy, so that the revision of the criminal justice system can be carried out through in-depth discussion and deliberation and public support,” the Supreme Prosecutors Office said in a press release.