Pondering Over The Perfection Of Some Problems With The Electoral System For Chinese People's Congress

In 1953, Chinese Electoral Law for National and Local People's Congresses was issued. This was the mark for the founding of Chinese Democratic Electoral System. The opening of the first session of the National People's Congress in September 1954 marked the establishment of the System of the National People's Congress and the establishment of Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress and the new milestone for Chinese democratic politics. The establishment of Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress ensures people to be masters of their own country. It promotes and supervises state organs to perform their powers on the basis of laws and to execute laws seriously. It also plays an important part in the protection of social stability, the realization of administration according to law, and the construction of a socialistic legal country. To some extent, Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress is the milestone for Chinese democratic and legal construction. It is an important composing part for advanced legal culture as well. We have established the Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress for 51 years. Its 51-year execution extends its scale and makes it to become an important means to ensure people to be masters of their own country. It also promotes state organs to administrate according to law and ensures the justice of judicature. Along with the affirmation of this system, we should objectively and clearly see that problems and challenges encountered by this system in the new situations result in a lot of unsatisfactory problems during its process of execution. This paper is going to analyze the existing problems with Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress. The analysis is based on the author's working experiences and is carried out from both the electors'point of view and the organizers'point of view. In the first place, from the electors'point of view, the electors'growing weary feeling, the appearance of the demands from new interest groups, and illegal behaviors in the process of election are analyzed. Next, from the organizers'point of view, the analysis is conducted on the illegal practices and the law violating behaviors in the process of election. At the same time, the author explains in detail the challenges faced by Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress in the new period from five aspects. Including the electoral theories and practices; the way of nomination and introduction for the candidates; the excessive number of representatives, the lack of professional representatives and the average low quality of the representatives; the way of election; the imperfect supervisal and redressing mechanism etc. Firstly, we can see that some disjointed phenomena exist between the electoral theories and practices. The masses of the people often feel that they have little democracy in the electoral activities; leaders'will formalism raise; and electors'duty seems only to give their markers on votes. Secondly, the way of nomination and introduction for the candidates is not faultless. Although the amended electoral law in 2004 stipulated the arrangement of the meeting between the candidates and the electors, the execution is not effective in practice. The candidates cannot realize free competition and the introduction for the candidates can only be offered in written form. Academic credentials, experiences and career success are emphasized. Electors know little about the candidates and electors and representatives can only passively vote from intuition. Thirdly, the number of representatives is excessive, professional representatives are shorthanded and the average quality of the representatives is not enough. Every field is taken into consideration and the number of representatives is excessive. The representatives'advancement is particularly emphasized and the ability for the participation and discussion in government and political affairs is neglected. This brings about the general low quality of the representatives and the blindness of the election. Fourthly, as for the way of election, it gives first place to indirect election with many levels. The representative law stipulates that representatives should keep close contact with people from the electoral districts and the original electoral units and accept their supervision. While in fact the indirect elected representatives above municipal rank cannot keep close contact with their original electoral units. The original electoral units have no means to know and to supervise what and how much the representatives do. For this reason, the indirect election with many levelscannot comprehensively and exactly reflect the electors'will and the connection between the representatives and the electors from primary level are weakened correspondingly. So that electors cannot put direct supervision into practice. Fifthly, the supervisal and redressing mechanism is imperfect. The procedural problems about election in the existing electoral law are oversimplified and incomprehensive. This results in ineffective investigation for quite a number of illegal behaviors in the electoral activities. Resulting from the above problems, Chinese Electoral System for People's Congress did not or did not wholly fulfill the legislators'anticipatory goal during its implement and execution. Those problems also make this system gain less support from the broad masses of the people than what the legislators expected. We can only give expression to this system's original goal of ensuring people to be masters of their own country, building socialistic political civilization, and executing the administration according to law by facing and reasonably solving problems and contradiction. The author for this paper combines his working practices and understandings and simply relates his pondering over the perfection of the Electoral System for Chinese People's Congress from five aspects. The standardization for the decision of candidates and the way of nomination, the perfection of the multi-candidate election and the introduction of competitive mechanism, the expansion of direct electoral scope, the representatives'professionalization and the perfection for the electoral procedural system are among his concern. Firstly, for the decision of candidates and the way of nomination, the author presents his assumptions for the restriction on the qualifications of candidates, for the principal part of the nomination of candidates, for the introduction and recommendation of candidates etc. secondly, as to the perfection of multi-candidate election and the introduction of competitive mechanism, the author suggests the introduction of competitive mechanism through the progressively abolition of equal candidate election. Thirdly, the author suggests the expansion of direct electoral scope when the citizens'average literacy quality improves and their will for participating and discussing in government and political affairs intensifies and the material technical means for direct participation in government and political affairs are avilable.Fourthly, the author proposes that the system of professional representatives is applicable through continuous exploration. Nowadays, the system of professional representatives can only be realized step by step. At first, the Standing Committees of People's Congresses at all levels must be professionalized, so as to reduce the number of the representatives of People's Congresses at all levels and realize the professionalization of representatives of People's Congresses from top to bottom. Fifthly, for the perfection of the electoral procedural system, the author suggests the establishment of a special court by drawing the experiences of western countries. This paper is anticipated to cast a brick to attract jade and to educe some genuine ponder over the amendment and the perfection of the Electoral System for Chinese People's Congress. Hence to help further perfection of this system and enable it to be a system, which practically ensures people's democratic rights and draws the support of the broad masses of the people. This is not only the expectation of the author, but also the expectation or need of the society, the people, the construction of legal system and the realization of political civilization.