On The Right To Decide Major Matters Of Local People’s Congresses

The right to decide major matters is an important power granted by China’s Constitution to local people’s congresses at all levels and their standing committees, an important form and way for citizens to be the master of their own affairs and administrate local national affairs through local organs of state power, and the ultimate manifestation of the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty. Through local people’s congresses at all levels and their standing committees, citizens in different places master local state power, administrate local major matters, determine local prospect and destiny, promote the comprehensive progress of local political construction, economic construction, cultural construction, social construction and ecological civilization construction, maintain local peace and stability, and realize the long-term peace and order and social harmony in their locality.The right to decide major matters manifests that local people’s congresses and their standing committees take the initiative to apply the thinking and way of rule by law to settle major matters in their locality, and it is the manifestation of the implementation of Constitution. With the right to decide major matters, local people’s congresses and their standing committees can further perfect and improve the local people’s congress system, which is conducive to promoting the scientific, democratic, normalized and institutionalized decisions on major matters made by local people’s congresses, to further building and consolidating the status and dignity of local people’s congresses and their standing committees among local state institutions, and to facilitating the integrated development and progress of local democracy and rule by law.In practice, local people’s congresses have made bold attempts and active explorations in exercising their right to decide major matters according to law. They have accumulated certain experiences and achieved certain results, which are mainly reflected in the following six aspects: the degree of legalization of the right to decide major matters is increasing; the number of local people’s congresses which exercise the right to decide major matters is increasing; the number of times local people’s congresses exercise the right to decide major matters is increasing; the exercise of the right to decide major matters by local people’s congresses is increasingly frequent; the scope in which local people’s congresses exercise the right to decide major matters is expanding; and the effect of local people’s congresses exercising the right to decide major matters is optimizing.However, the exercise of the right to decide major matters by local people’s congresses over the past thirty years is accompanied with numerous problems which need to be improved. These problems are mainly manifested in two aspects. Firstly, the theoretical research is not comprehensive and systematic, and no consensus has been reached on some key and core problems. Secondly, the exercise of the right to decide major matters by local people’s congresses is irregular and ineffective and no “propagable and reproducible” experience and pattern has been formed. The primary causes for the said dilemma are as follows. Firstly, local people’s congresses fail to correctly understand the nature, positioning, function and value of their right to decide major matters and fail to correctly treat and handle their relationship with local party committees and local governments. Secondly, local people’s congresses fail to correctly define and master the scope of their right to decide major matters, thus resulting in either dereliction of duty or ultra vires. Thirdly, no scientific, reasonable, just and efficient procedures have been established for the exercise of the right to decide major matters, thus making it too random or too tedious in practice. Finally, the decisions made by local people’s congresses on major matters are low-quality, implemented ineffectively and lack protection and supervision. As a result, such decisions only turn out to be a mere scrap of paper and never come into play in practice.Therefore, it is necessary to summarize the basic experience of local people’s congresses in exercising the right to decide major matters, analyze the existing defects and problems and then probe into the measures for comprehensive improvement and the methods to realize such measures, thus promoting local people’s congresses to effectively exercise their right to decide major matters and causing the right to give play to its due function and value as far as possible. Precisely for the said purpose, this paper conducts new thinking and exploration on the basis of studying and consulting the existing research results concerning the right to decide major matters of local people’s congresses and combining the actual situation of how local people’s congresses exercise such right, and then puts forward the relevant suggestions, namely reinforcing the top-level design to enact national laws, perfecting the local people’s congress system to improve the ability to exercise the right, and establishing and perfecting the procedure mechanism to give play to the role of procedures. The aforementioned measures can be adopted to help local people’s congresses exercise their right to decide major matters more thoroughly and more effectively.