Out of Bounds Oppositions' Drive Shots Drive Away Voter Support Elected officials have every right to enjoy their hobbies, including taking golf tours abroad on weekends at their own expense. So what's the media's fuss with nine law makers ofthe opposition Democratic Party (DP) travling to Thailand for a five-day golfing excursion last week? As we know, there were melees at the National Assembly recently making headlines in global media outlets along with a photo, which showed rival legislators and their aides locked in a scuffle mobilizing sledgehammers and fire extinguishers. But most of the lawmakers in question knew better than that and stayed away from the scenes. Yes, the Assembly has just opened another extraordinary session to discuss scores of bills, which the govening Grand National Party attempted to railroad into laws but failed to in the face of popular opposition. Yet the golfing lawmakers must have finished their homework, and don't have to burn the midnigt oil on weekends, as some of their less bright colleagues do. Moreover, these representatives of the people have had to put off their overseas golfing no fewer than times becaus of a "hectic" parliamentary schedule. By most appearances, they must be victims of the old politics by the governing camp spying on each and every move of opposition politicians. Such were the excuses made, ether explicitly or implicitly, by the controversial legislators, who belong to a political group posing itself as the "party for poor people" but couldn't wait for just a month or so before the end of the extra parliamentary sitting, in which dozens of urgen bills are awaiting serious discussion and quick legisltion to help the nation get out of the deepening economic recession. How many voters will think this is a party eager and able to take power back in four years' time? The DP leadership has decided not to discipline them, whcih itself may be difficult, as the whole story is not about legal or even cstomary justifiability but about descretion, ethics and good sense - and lack thereof of course. But there is no denying the main opposition party has suffered critical damage on its moral credence to fight against what it has billed as "MB's (President Lee Myung-bak's) bad laws," allegedly aimed at "making the rich people richer and poor people poorer." What baffles DP supporters more is the former governing party has criticized the GNP for not giving them sufficient time to discuss them. The golfing blunder comes on top o a series of DP's self-destructive moves, sch as its obstruction of law enforcement against a party leader charged with violating campaign funding laws and receiving - or exacting - a large sum of money from a businessman as well as its failure to come up with policy alternatives resorting to only a "physical struggle," an old tactic that worked and gained voters' sympathy before th nation's democratization two decades ago. Small wonder the DP has earned such disgraceful nicknames as the "sterile party" or "political egetable" in the first year as a political oposition. It might have been encouraged by the slight rise in approval rating in the wake of its Assembly fight. Still the opposition party should realize that was probably the limit voters could endure to block a unilateral parliamentary poceeding by the governing party. Unless the DP redoubles its efforts to better serve te voters, its days out in the cold will likely continue far longer than it thinks - and there will be lots of time for good shots, then.