President Park Geun-hye is set to reshuffle the Cabinet soon, with at least five ministerial posts expected to be affected.

The impending Cabinet appointments have been necessitated by the five Cabinet members’ plans to run in the general election in April.

The five include three incumbent lawmakers who want to seek reelection — Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan, Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea and Gender Equality Minister Kim Hee-jung. In addition, Minister of the Interior Chong Jong-sup and Trade Minister Yoon Sang-jick are mostly likely to run on ruling party tickets.

This means the Cabinet shakeup is conducted due to the ministers’ election plans, not due to their poor performance, policy failures or other inevitable reasons. It tells us that they should have not taken the Cabinet posts in the first place.

The Park administration has inherited a bad tradition of the Korean presidency — bringing lawmakers into Cabinet posts and sending out ministers to compete in elections.

It is understandable that, as the chief executive, the president needs good ties with the ruling party and the National Assembly as a whole. But the practice of installing lawmakers in the Cabinet lineup does more harm than good.

Those who join the Cabinet without renouncing their parliamentary seats only make brief stopovers as ministers, and the new appointees and bureaucrats in each ministry know well that the newcomers’ stints will be short. Under such circumstances, few ministers and officials would be able to forge the reliable, effective relationships needed to run state affairs.

A vivid example is Park’s appointment in March of Reps. Yoo Il-ho and Yoo Ki-june as the transport and maritime ministers. Park pushed ahead with the appointments knowing that she had to release them for the April elections. Both stepped down in November, serving in their ministerial positions for just eight months. This absurd practice must end.

What’s a little relieving is that potential Cabinet appointees being mentioned by administration officials and the media this time are mostly former and incumbent government officials and academics. It is hoped that Park will not repeat her past mistake of selecting the wrong people.