The History Of Constitutional National Congress Representative Election

The National Assembly of Constitution Actualization was held in1948byNanjing Government to implement the constitution, which was called the FirstNational Assembly by Taiwan and “the national assembly representatives should beselected through common, equal, direct, secret and single vote method” according tothe R.O.C.Constitution in1946. From Nov. of1947to Feb. of1948, the representativeelection of National Assembly of Constitution Actualization was conducted inKuomintang area. The research on representative election of National Assembly ofConstitution Actualization can help study Chinese modern electoral system, discuss thepolitical system trend of Nanjing Government, observe the chaotic phenomena duringthe end of Kuomintang period and grasp the underlying causes and historicalinevitability of the collapse of Kuomintang government. The purpose of the thesis is toobserve and analyze the actual process of representative election of National Assemblyof Constitution Actualization of Nanjing Government so as to analyze the status andfunction of this election in the electoral system, the political situation of this electionand the function and influence of this election on the Nanjing Government ofKuomintang.The thesis can be divided into five parts:The first part is the introduction part that introduces the significance of the topic,review of academic research trends, definitions of relevant concepts and innovationpoints, difficult points, thought and structure.The second part is chapter one,“The Election Background and HistoricalCondition”, which can be divided into four sections. In the first section, theintroduction of election ideology is introduced. In Geography of the World, Lin Zexupresented the congress composed of people elected by all the tribes in England; WeiYuan introduced the congresses in England, America and Switzerland and explained that the “chiefs of tribes” and congress were all selected; Tang Zhen, He Qi, Hu Liyuan,Xue Fucheng, Zheng Guanying and Chen Chi proposed to set up House of Lords andHouse of Commons, and House of Commons implemented electoral system. Thesecond section introduced the generation and evolution of Chinese modern electoralsystem. Chinese modern electoral system began from the Commerce Chamber Electionin1905and came into state institution level by Provincial Assembly Election in1908;after the establishment of Republic of China, the first and second congress elections,provincial assembly election, president and vice president elections were conductedand national assembly representative election, national political assembly memberelection, national constituent assembly representative election, provincial assemblyelection were conducted by Nanjing Government and the electoral system was pushedahead continuously. The third section and fourth section introduce the evolutionprocess of Nanjing Government political system and the political situation for NationalAssembly of Constitution Actualization representative election so as to lay foundationfor further investigation.The third part includes chapter two, three and four, which mainly investigates thewhole process of National Assembly of Constitution Actualization representativeelection. Chapter two is “Election Laws and Regulations and Election Preparation”,including four sections; the first section investigates and introduces Recall Act ofNational Assembly Representative Election and the related laws and regulations; sixproblems involved in the laws and regulations are introduced, including election region,right to vote, the impossibility of current official to be the national assembly candidatein the place where he took office, candidate nomination, professional grouprepresentative election and some techniques. The second part investigates and analyzesthe establishment, process, constitution and work situation of election office and theelectoral machineries at different levels. The third section investigates and analyzesvoter registration process and basic information, confirms the serious work process ofsome areas and poses the problems. The fourth part investigates the main principles forrepresentative quota allocation and the specific allocation amount. According toAllocation List of National Assembly Representative Quota, the quota can be dividedVI into:“(I)representatives selected by the counties, cities and equal areas;(II)representatives selected by Mongolia;(III)representatives selected by Tibet;(IV)representatives selected by all the nationalities at border areas;(V)representativesselected by foreign residents;(VI) representatives selected by the citizens with specialliving habits.” The fifth section is “Candidate Nomination and Registration”, whichelaborates the requirements for National Assembly representative candidate, candidateselection methods and candidate nomination procedure. There are two candidatenomination methods for National Assembly representative candidate, one is voternomination through signing, the other one is political party nomination. During thenomination, verification and registration processes of National Assemblyrepresentative candidate, the nomination work of signed representative candidate wasstable and that of political party nominated candidates was unsmooth; there wascandidate amount problem of all the political parties between Kuomintang, YouthParty and Democratic Socialist Party and it was compromised through negotiation. Thelist of candidates nominated by the three political parties was determined by CentralStanding Committee of Kuomintang. Chapter three investigates the vote process,which can be divided into four sections. The first section is the election process ofShanghai, Beiping and Tianjin, the major way was to set up two vote stations,including regional vote station and vote station for professional women’s groups; allthe elections were held together and the voter came to different vote stations accordingto their category. The second section is the election of Nanjing and Chongqing whichis different from that of Shanghai, Beiping and Tianjin; the regional, women andprofessional group elections were held at different periods; a certain period was usedfor regional election, the other for women elections and another for professional groupelection. The third section is the elections of overseas Chinese and “appeasement”region; the overseas Chinese election was organized by the local consulate or overseasChinese group. The election period in “appeasement” region was increased and theywere held in different areas and the development was complex. Chapter four is the“Forced Concession and Issuing of Election Certificate”, which includes four sections.The first section investigates the reason and process for the disputes between nominated representatives through signing and political party nominatedrepresentatives. During the election process, many candidates nominated byDemocratic Socialist Party, Youth Party and Kuomintang were not elected and thenominated Kuomintang candidates through signing were elected, therefore, disputeappeared. The second section mainly presents that owing to the functions of differentaspects, the central leading body of Kuomintang and the national governmentdetermined to ask the nominated Kuomintang candidates through signing to make aconcession and investigates the forced concession process when the candidates did notmake a concession forwardly. Supplemental Provisions for Political Party Nominationwas put forward in State Conference, which posed that:“I, all the Kuomintang, YouthParty and Democratic Socialist Party members who wanted to be the delegate to thenational assembly and legislature committee candidate should be nominated by hispolitical party; II, the candidate who used voter signing procedure to register andnominate should be nonparty personage.” It was put into effect and strongly opposedby the elected candidates through signing. The third part mainly introduces that theelected candidates through signing struggled for their legal rights though the strongeststruggle methods under the peace condition, including funeral and apastia so as toforce the Kuomintang authority to make a concession: besides the one that should begiven to the coalition party, the selection within Kuomintang should be determined byvoluntary method; for the involuntary one, it should be determined by ballot result.The fourth section presents that since there were no methods, Kuomintang had to solvethe problem unwittingly and issue election certificate to the candidate nominated bythe political party who was not elected and the elected candidate who was nominatedthrough signing, however, the election certificate was issued to the elected candidatewho was nominated through signing after filling in the document for not attendingNational Assembly.The fourth part is chapter five; in this part, the election is analyzed from multipleangles, including the improvement of the election on system and the profounddiscussion on the reasons for the problems in order to acquire the position and functionof this election in Chinese modern electoral system. It is believed that from the aspectVIII of system, several aspects of the election should be advanced: firstly, common, equaland direct vote principle was posed, which made the modern electoral system comeinto a new stage; secondly, voter nomination through signing method was posed incandidate selection principles and thus the actual election was realized; thirdly,modernization of election means was one of the most outstanding features of theelection; fourthly, there were much more laws and regulations announced by theelection than the other elections so that there were laws to abide by. The second sectionelaborates the control of Kuomintang on the election. In order to control the election,the stick and the carrot methods were applied by Kuomintang; on the one hand, it wasdetermined that the Kuomintang member who had not been nominated normallyshould not run for election and the party headquarters of all levels should dissuade; forthe member who could not be dissuaded, call the election office of the same level torepeal the registration qualification of the candidates; on the other hand, launchedpublic opinion offensive, and advised them to realize democratic constitutionalism andbe “unknown hero”; however, the desired aims were not obtained due to many reasons.The third section uncovers the problems in fraudulent practice and bribery election. Itwas posed that the important officials of Kuomintang applied “enclosure” method onthe upper level to manipulate election through controlling candidate nomination andthe people on the lower level did not have such right, however, the election situationand result could be controlled through controlling vote right certificates and ballots andthus bribery, menace and even interception of vote appeared. In order to understand theinfluence of the election, this section was established to introduce the analysis andevaluation of the public opinions on the election.The fifth part is the conclusion part; in this part,the own cognition is acquired andthe own opinion is posed based on the above investigation and analysis. Through thecomprehensive survey on the election process, it is acquired that the most outstandingfeature is the internal inextricable contradiction: the first one is the contradictionbetween the comprehensive laws and regulations and the confused operation; thesecond one is the contradiction between the control and runaway of Kuomintang; thethird one is that the above two contradictions are actually the reflection of contradiction between the trend of the times of social development and the actualpolitical needs of Kuomintang and the internal inherent contradiction of Kuomintang.Due to the above contradictions, there were many problems of the election andNanjing Government did not acquire the desired aim for election results; the actualelection was not conducted and thus actual constitution was also not conducted,therefore, the legality of its political power could not be enhanced and the legality forsuppressing a rebellion could not be established; on the contrary, its politicaldisaggregation was exposed and the internal contradiction was aggravated. It must bepointed out that the election was held when combating with Chinese Communist Partyand declaring that the Communist Party of China and China Democratic League wereillegal, which reflected that the election violated the trend of times and socialdevelopment requirements, however, it was not the election itself; therefore, its failureon the battleground caused the collapse of its government which made the election afarce. Of course, for the electoral system, there are many aspects for summarizing andusing for reference.