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full screen Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans demonstrated today in connection with the impeachment vote on Yoon Suk-Yeol. Photo: Ahn Young-Joon/AP/TT
The noose tightens around South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol. Today’s announcement is the first step towards him being removed, says Jakob Hallgren at the Foreign Policy Institute.
The vote in parliament does not formally mean that Yoon Suk-Yeol has been impeached, but instead that impeachment proceedings have been initiated, says Jakob Hallgren.
– Then it is in practice that this worsens the prospects for him dramatically and will most likely lead to his resignation, but we are not quite there yet, he tells TT.
Today’s decision also means that the president is “immediately suspended from his duties”, points out Jakob Hallgren, and it will be the country’s prime minister who instead acts as deputy president.
— There is a small chance that he will be allowed to stay, but they are quite small. It is really a step on the way and given everything that has happened, the probability is high that he will not be allowed to return to office.
According to Jakob Hallgren, the next step in the process is a meeting to be held at 10 a.m. on Monday local time, that is, the night before Monday Swedish time. However, the legal process runs the risk of dragging on, as it has been shown historically, points out Jakob Hallgren:
— The Constitutional Court has 180 days to decide whether to approve the parliament’s decision or let him keep his job. The interesting thing is that the same thing happened in 2016 with a former president and then it took 91 days before the decision to resign. On another occasion, in 2004, it took 63 days.