Recall elections in villages get boost
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China is one step closer to outlining an improved law in villages that will make recall election more accessible and avoid impropriety in proxy voting, a senior official said yesterday.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs has finished the draft amendment to the Organic Law of Village Committees, which clarifies the procedure for recall elections, voter qualification and duties of the urban electoral commission, said Li Xueju, Minister of Civil Affairs.
The draft, which addresses problems during urban development to guarantee grassroots democracy, was submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, the country's top legislature, for its first review yesterday.
Generally, a draft law goes through three reviews before being adopted.
"In order to keep elections and representative recall fair, the draft requires the establishment of the urban electoral commission, an independent organization whose members should not have duties on the village committee which presides over the voting," Li told legislators.
The draft stipulates that if more than one-third of the voters or more than one-third of the villagers' representatives jointly ask to remove a village committee member, the electoral commission will hold a recall election.
The current law says the village committee presides over recall elections, which makes recall almost impossible in most villages, said Nian Wei, a 27-year-old college-educated village cadre at Shayu village in Beijing.
Besides the urban electoral commission, the draft revision also clarifies the rules for proxy voting. It allows village residents to designate no more than three other villagers to vote on their behalf and the candidate for village committee membership is not qualified for the commission.
Proxy voting should be verified and be publicized one day before the election or recall election, the draft revision said.
Surveys by the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that the average proportion of proxy voting across the country was about 15 percent in 2005.
"Most election disputes revolve around proxy votes. You can use 20 yuan ($3) to buy a vote sometimes in the countryside. In this way, the farmers cannot elect a qualified leader," Nian said.
The investigation covering 14 provinces and municipalities conducted by the NPC shows that there are still some problems in need of further study, like the relationship between the party branch office in villages and the village committee, proxy voting and terms for the committee members.
But some experts said the draft revision is too general.
Dang Guoying, a researcher with the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the draft revision should be more specific.
"It should add that once the recall election closes, the committee member recalled should leave office within a certain period of time," Dang said.
Xiong Wenzhao, a professor at Minzu University of China, said that the draft revision should elaborate the qualification of the legal proxy voter and regulate the procedure for proxy voting.
As a college-educated village cadre for two and a half years, Nian also suggested a hearing system be introduced into the legislation process.
Promoted since the 1990s, the current law has since had a sweeping effect on the countryside.
To date, at least 31 provinces and municipalities have held village elections in some form, involving more than two million villages, 2.3 million elected village committee members, and about 600,000 village committees, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
