Deputies share collective power
- Source: Global Times
- [02:59 March 05 2010]
- Comments
Deputies leave the Great Hall of the People Thursday morning after a preparatory meeting ahead of today's NPC session, which will last until March 14. Photo: Deng Jingyin
NPC members not only occupy delegate positions, they do have powers, Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the Third Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), or the parliament, told reporters Thursday in response to a NPC deputy's complaint that she felt powerless when people turned to her for help.
Deputies do have their say
Li said that every deputy is part of the parliament. Deputies act on behalf of the public and exercise the State power in accordance with the law.
They are entitled to attend NPC's annual sessions and review bills and reports listed in the annual sessions' agenda. They also put forward their bills or proposals and vote.
But the spokesman added that the NPC uses State power as an organ by having discussions at conferences. Individual deputies do not have the authority to solve specific problems.
The spokesman said that deputies could speak for the public, and submit bills, or proposals based on research they conducted.
The spokesman made the remarks after Hu Xiaoyan, 36, one of the nation's first migrant worker-turned-NPC-deputy, told the media that she felt frustrated and helpless sometimes during her tenure.
"I am a deputy. But that doesn't give me too much power," she told Guangzhou Daily in February, less than two weeks before the start of this year's annual sessions of the NPC and CPPCC. "Sometimes, there is nothing I can do but be worried."
Hu, who came from Southwest China's Sichuan Province, was elected a deputy in 2008 in Guangdong, where she worked in a construction company.
Hu disclosed her contact information after she assumed the position. She was soon inundated with e-mails and telephone calls from migrant workers across the country, asking for help to solve their problems, mostly labor disputes.
Kang Houming, also a migrant-worker-turned-deputy, agreed that deputies only act as a supervisor and a liaison between the public and government, but they have no power to solve problems.
"We will report cases to the government, but some of them are not handled properly," he told the Global Times Thursday, adding that he hopes local law enforcement departments could enhance their capability to help migrant workers after deputies report problems.
More grass-roots deputies
Hu, the grass-roots deputy, also feel there's a need for more deputies like her to safeguard the rights of migrants.
"Don't expect one single deputy to address all migrant workers' problems. The nation's 300 million migrant workers need more deputies like me," she told the media.
And more grass-roots deputies, especially those from the countryside, are expected to emerge as the new NPC session is set to amend the Electoral Law, which was first adopted in 1953.
The amendment to the election law will expand people's democracy and safeguard their rights "to be masters of their own destiny," Li, the spokesman, told the news conference.
Li said that the amendment is intended to "provide institutional guarantee for improving the people's congress system and advancing socialist democracy."
The amendment aims to ensure equal electoral rights between urban and rural people by adopting the same ratio of deputies to the represented population in elections of people's congress deputies.
Li said "conditions are ripe" to adopt the same ratio "at one go" which manifests the principle of equal electoral rights for each citizen, region and ethnic group.
After the last amendment in 1995, the Electoral Law stipulates that each rural deputy to the people's congress, at any level, is to represent a population four times that of an urban deputy. The ratio was eight to one before 1995.
A proposal to change the ratio from 4:1 to 1:1 is meant to break a longstanding imbalance.
"The amendment will 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 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times earlier.
The structure of the country's population changed with the urbanization drive, he said.
Rural residents made up almost 90 percent of the country's population in 1949. With urbanization, the ratio of urban and rural residents was about 46 to 54 last year.
The "8 to 1 ratio" was a "reasonable arrangement" and a "necessary step" toward a more equal election, Li said, adding a more complete electoral system would be adopted in the future with the country's political, economic and cultural development.
Global Times – Agencies
