Farmers may get to balance political scale
- Source: Global Times
- [01:30 February 23 2010]
- Comments
By Huang Jingjing
Farmers will have more opportunities to join the National People's Congress and make important decisions under a draft amendment set to be discussed next month, a legal researcher said Monday.
Currently, there is one deputy for every 960,000 rural residents and every 240,000 urbanites in the National People's Congress (NPC).
A proposal to change the ratio from 4:1 to 1:1 is meant to break a longstanding imbalance. The Third Session of the 11th National People's Congress starting from March 5 will debate the proposal.
"The amendment seeks to give farmers an equal chance as urban residents to be elected and to make decisions on regional and national affairs, though it doesn't mean that the number of farmer deputies will increase overnight," Mo Jihong, constitutional professor at the Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Monday.
Zhang Chunsheng, former member of the NPC Law Committee, agreed.
"It will greatly enhance the rights of farmers to participate in, express, and supervise national and social affairs, and promote the building of a socialist democracy," Zhang was quoted as saying by the Procuratorial Daily Monday.
"As China develops fast socially and economically, people who participate in the election and social conditions under which election is held also keeps changing," Mo said.
At the end of 2008, the urban population was 606 million, 45.7 percent of the total population. The urban population will be 50 percent or even more by 2015, according to Xu Anbiao, a member of the NPC Standing Committee legislative affairs commission.
"So we need to revamp the law and make it suit the society and advance with the times," Mo said. "The new amendment will help achieve electoral equality between urban and rural populations."
However, the question of how to ensure migrant people's participation in the election was not included in the proposed amendment.
Ma Jiantang, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said last month January that China has about 180 million people who work and live outside of their hometown.
"The reform to change the residence registration system is still in progress across the country. The issue is complicated and the conditions to tackle it are not mature yet," said Hu Kangsheng, director of the NPC Law Committee.
To expand democracy, scholar Ying Xuejun said on his chinavalue.net blog that more seats should be handed over to grass-roots laborers and civilians.
Ying said grass-roots deputies to the NPC make up less than 10 percent.
The amendment also stipulates that voters should be able to vote in private without influence from others.
