Grand National Party presidential candidate, Lee Myung-Bak (l) and his wife Kim Yun-Ok (r) celebrate with supporters outside their party headquarters in Seoul, following his victory in the country's elections, Dec. 19.

When voting ended in South Korea’s presidential election, exit polls indicated what most in the country had anyway expected: the opposition Grand National Party’s Lee Myung-bak was to be the country’s president.
Mr Lee won a thumping endorsement, securing close to 50% of the vote in a 12-man presidential field. Mr Lee’s victory brightens the conservative GNP’s prospects of also winning control of the legislature in elections next April.
So ends a decade of liberal rule by Kim Dae-jung and his successor Roh Moo-hyun. South Koreans are disillusioned with Mr Roh, who talked about improving their lot but failed to deliver robust economic growth.
His divisive rhetoric angered many. “A president has to bring the country together,“ Hyundai’s chairman and a legislator, Chung Mong-joon, suggested. “Roh Moo-hyun divided the country.“
Many South Koreans believe that Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy’’ of being friendly towards North Korea, which continued under Mr Roh, brought them little in the way of security.
South Koreans suspect that vast amounts of money have been paid to the north in return for summits with the dictator.
Mr Lee wants an end to aid if North Korea does not give up its nuclear-weapons programme. He intends to use six-party talks (with China, America, Japan, Russia and North Korea) to put pressure on the north.
Raised in poverty, like many of his 49m countrymen, Mr Lee has an appealing chutzpah. Voters evidently liked the 66-year-old’s strong personal story: He overcame malnutrition, paid his own way through university by working as a rubbish collector, and eventually rose to become the boss of ten Hyundai affiliates.
His pragmatism helped, too. He is not an old-guard conservative. He was arrested and jailed during his university days. As mayor of Seoul, the capital, he sought to beautify the city.
He planted trees, widened pavements, created green public spaces and improved public transport.
Mr Lee’s last election rally was in the centre of Seoul beside the Cheonggyecheon stream. The revival and beautification of the 5.8km waterway through the city became a symbol of his success as mayor.
For many voters his ability to graft a consensus among Seoul’s diverse interest groups, to complete the project, augurs well for his time in higher office.
As president Mr Lee says he will slash taxes and ease regulations in order to boost consumer spending.
At a news conference the day before the poll he promised a “new era“ of economic growth once he takes office in February.
He even made specific predictions, suggesting that South Korea’s main stock index will rise to 3,000 one year into his presidency and will be at 5,000 when his five-year term ends.
The Kospi closed at 1,861.47 on the day before the election.
If there is a cloud already on the horizon it concerns corruption. Mr Lee sees South Korea’s chaebol (conglomerates) as important allies in reviving the economy.
Thus many suspect he will not press prosecutors to investigate alleged bribery and influence peddling at Samsung.
Mr Lee, too, is under investigation for his role in an investment scheme that defrauded thousands.
He protests that he “has never been involved in scandal as a CEO or as Seoul mayor“ and blames his opponents for spreading propaganda against him. By the time Mr Lee is scheduled to take office, he promises, his name will be cleared.
ECONOMIST.COM

As an Australian citizen, I voted in the recent federal election there. So did about 95 percent of registered Australian voters. That figure contrasts markedly with elections in the United States, where the turnout in the 2004 presidential election barely exceeded 60 percent.
In congressional elections that fall in the middle of a president’s term, usually fewer than 40 percent of eligible Americans bother to vote.
There is a reason why so many Australians vote. In the 1920s, when voter turnout fell below 60 percent, Parliament made voting compulsory.
Since then, despite governments of varying political complexions, there has been no serious attempt to repeal the law, which polls show is supported by about 70 percent of the population.
Australians who don’t vote receive a letter asking why. Those without an acceptable excuse, like illness or travel abroad, must pay a small fine, but the number fined is less than 1 percent of eligible voters.
In practice, what is compulsory is not casting a valid vote, but going to the polling place, having one’s name checked off, and putting a ballot paper in the box.
The secrecy of the ballot makes it impossible to prevent people writing nonsense on their ballot papers or leaving them blank. The percentage of invalid votes, while a little higher where voting is compulsory, comes nowhere near offsetting the difference in voter turnout.
Compulsory voting is not unique to Australia. Belgium and Argentina introduced it earlier, and it is practiced in many other countries, especially in Latin America, although both sanctions and enforcement vary.
Because I was in the U.S. at the time of the Australian election, I was under no compulsion to vote. I had many reasons to hope for the defeat of John Howard’s conservative government, but that doesn’t explain why I went to some trouble to vote, since the likelihood that my vote would make any difference was minuscule (and, predictably, it did not).
When voting is voluntary, and the chance that the result will be determined by any single person’s vote is extremely low, even the smallest cost--for example, the time it takes to stroll down to the polling place, wait in line and cast a ballot--is sufficient to make voting seem irrational. Yet if many people follow this line of reasoning, and do not vote, a minority of the population can determine a country’s future, leaving a discontented majority.
Poland’s recent electoral history provides an example. In the 2005 national elections, barely 40 percent of those eligible voted, the lowest total since the advent of free elections after the communist period.
As a result, Jaroslaw Kaczynski was able to become prime minister with the support of a coalition of parties that gained a majority of seats in Parliament, despite receiving only 6 million votes, out of a total of 30 million eligible voters.
When Kaczynski was forced to go to the polls again only two years later, it became evident that many of those who had not voted in 2005 were unhappy with the outcome.
Turnout rose to nearly 54 percent, with the increase especially marked among younger and better-educated voters. Kaczynski’s government suffered a heavy defeat.
If we don’t want a small minority to determine our government, we will favor a high turnout. Yet since our own vote makes such a tiny contribution to the outcome, each of us still faces the temptation to get a free ride, not bothering to vote while hoping that enough other people will vote to keep democracy robust and to elect a government that is responsive to the views of a majority of citizens.
Peter Singer
JAPANTIMES.CO.JP

Iraqi children amputees pose for a picture at the Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, June 8.

For generations to come, Iraqis will have to cope with the physical and mental scars of tens of thousands of people severely injured in the violence of the past four years.
They include thousands of amputees, many of them children.
The date, time and place that changed Ali Abdullah’s life is etched in his memory.
It was November 24, 2005. A Thursday morning. He was 13.
Ali’s father runs a parking lot south of Baghdad. On that day, he had agreed to let his only son open the business by himself for the first time. It was a proud moment.
Ali went to work. In the middle of the morning he stepped out for breakfast just as a car bomb exploded nearby. Shrapnel destroyed one of his legs and an eye, and peppered his chest with wounds.
Ali told his story while waiting for a new artificial leg to be fitted at the Baghdad Artificial Limbs Centre, one of the Iraqi capital’s two main prosthetics clinics.
“I came here to replace the old one because it became too small and I limp when I walk,“ he said.
Ali arrived at the centre with a neighbor, a 23-year-old policeman hoping to be fitted with a prosthetic foot after losing his in a bombing at a checkpoint he was manning.
The Baghdad centre alone has registered 2,700 amputees since 2003. The cost of looking after them is high--especially in the case of children, who will need to replace prosthetic limbs regularly as they grow.
“We mostly care for children. We try to provide them with the limb as soon as possible. We like to help them to return to school, to regain a normal life,“ said Qassim Mohammed, the centre’s deputy director.
Besides the physical cost, there is a huge psychological toll.
“Some of them come here in despair, but we try to plant hope in them, because 50 percent of therapy is psychological,“ said Hussein Majeed, one of about 20 technicians in the centre’s workshop, where the prosthetics are built using old machine tools, plaster casts, plastic and glue.
Saad al-Shaboutt, 65, said he now felt able to cope, two years after losing his leg to a bomb at Baghdad’s Shorja market.
“I reached the point when I wanted to commit suicide, but I am better now,“ he said in the centre’s waiting room.
“I am a manager at Iraqi Airways. I was about to be transferred to be the head of our office in Cairo, but I cancelled the transfer. Without a leg, how could I go?“ he said.
Even doctors become emotionally involved.
Sadiq Ali, a psychotherapist at the centre who helps counsel victims to cope with a future of disability, recalled a young man he treated two months ago who had lost all four limbs.
“I was about to cry in front of him, but I thought
that would hurt him. He was in good spirits, he
accepted his fate.“
Wounded victims often need advanced reconstructive surgery. Yet Iraq has experienced a brain drain of medical specialists fleeing in fear after doctors were targeted by insurgents or kidnap and extortion gangs.
“I used to have 10 anesthesiologists, now I have four,“ said one of Baghdad’s leading reconstructive surgeons, who spoke under condition neither he nor his hospital be named.
His hospital is able to perform only about 10 operations a week, down from 14-15 a week before the war, he said.
In the hospital corridor, 2-year-old Nabaa was being cradled by her father while waiting her turn to be examined by consultants.
She had been shot in the head with two bullets a year ago while driving to Baghdad along with a number of her relatives. She survived but the skin on the top of her head was severely damaged, leaving her bald.
“One of my brothers and my cousin were killed, my wife and my mother were wounded. My other brother was seriously wounded with 11 bullets sprayed all over his body, now he is lying in the hospital motionless,“ said her father Mehdi, his child in one hand and her X-ray in the other.
Back at the Artificial Limbs Centre, technicians asked Ali to come back later in the month to get his new leg.
Before he left, he again recounted the story of the blast and said how the children at school often asked to see his prosthetic leg, but he shows it only to close friends.
“Of course I wish I did not go out on that day,“ he said. “It was Thursday, at 10:30. November 24, 2005.“
REUTERS.COM