Court dismisses petition against removal of voting rights from bribery-convicted politicians

The Constitutional Court has dismissed a petition filed by a former lawmaker against a law that removes voting rights from politicians convicted of bribery, citing the expiration of the period for his legal claim, sources said Wednesday. The dismissal was unanimously decided last week on the petition lodged in 2020 by Sim Hag-bong, a former lawmaker who was sentenced to four years and three months in prison on illegal political funding and bribery charges. Upon release from prison in 2020, Sim filed the petition, claiming that his voting rights were unfairly infringed upon by the Public Official Election Act that removes suffrage for 10 years from elected public officials convicted of illegal political funding or bribery committed while in office. The Constitutional Court ruled that the one-year limit for Sim's legal claim had expired as it decided to dismiss his case without a verdict. The court concluded that Sim had to file his suit by May 2018, a year since the May parliamentary elections in 2017, wh ich were the first public elections held after he was given his final sentence, for his legal claim to have been valid for deliberations. The court decision establishes that the one-year time period given to such legal claims should be counted from the occurrence of the first public elections following the petitioner's final sentence, not from the point at which the petitioner completes their prison term, as Sim had argued. Source: Yonhap News Agency