"Da Jun Talks about the National People's Congress No. 28" In which year was the villagers' self-government system established?
2024-08-14
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In 1980, when the villagers of Hezhai Village in Guangxi elected their own village cadres for the first time, perhaps they did not fully realize the significance of this action. But in any case, it was such an ordinary village committee election today that opened an era.
The Constitution adopted in 1982 stipulates that residents' committees or villagers' committees established in urban and rural areas according to residential areas are grassroots mass autonomous organizations.
According to Wang Hanbin, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, in his interview with Wang Hanbin, the decision-making situation at that time can be understood. He said that the status and role of grassroots mass autonomous organizations were stipulated in the Constitution, which was indeed the first time in the 1982 Constitution. For a long time, no appropriate form was found to ensure that the masses in the vast rural grassroots can directly exercise their democratic rights and manage their own affairs according to law.
At the beginning of liberation, village offices were set up at the grassroots level in rural areas as agencies of township governments. Soon after the establishment of agricultural cooperatives, the movement of collectivization was launched, and the "integration of government and society" system was implemented. Communes (roughly the size of townships) and production brigades (roughly administrative villages) were both administrative and production-management integrated. All activities were ordered and arranged from top to bottom, and farmers did not have much autonomy. This system not only hindered the construction of rural democratic politics, but also fettered the development of the rural economy. The so-called "great democracy" implemented during the "Cultural Revolution" was actually not democratic from top to bottom. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, the household contract responsibility system was generally implemented in rural areas, and the "integration of government and society" system of "three-level ownership and team as the basis" gradually disintegrated. This change greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of the vast number of farmers for production and promoted the rapid development of rural productivity. At the same time, after having the autonomy of production and management, farmers paid more attention to their own interests, village affairs management, and cadre behavior, reflecting a strong sense of participation. Under this situation, who will be responsible for the public affairs and public welfare undertakings originally undertaken by the production brigades and production teams, and who will implement village affairs management democratically and impartially, became a common and urgent problem in the vast rural areas. At this time, farmers in some places in southern Guangxi and other places spontaneously organized themselves to establish organizations such as "Villagers' Committees" and "Villagers' Self-Government Associations" to democratically elect leaders to handle the public affairs and public welfare undertakings of the village. After Comrade Peng Zhen learned of this situation, he immediately sent cadres from the Legal Affairs Committee to Yishan and Luocheng counties in Guangxi to conduct rural investigations, and listened to reports many times with the leaders of the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other relevant departments to jointly summarize experience. He believed that although this form of organization was not perfect, it was a new thing that was in line with China's national conditions and came into being at the right time. It represented the democratic demands of farmers at this stage and should be affirmed and supported. He wrote a report to the Party Central Committee and obtained the Central Committee's consent to write the Villagers' Committee and Residents' Committee into the Constitution as grassroots mass self-governing organizations.
According to Wang Hanbin's recollection, the 23rd meeting of the Sixth National People's Congress Standing Committee discussed the draft amendment of the Villagers' Committee Organization Law for two days. Comrade Peng Zhen spoke at the joint group meeting, systematically speaking about his thoughts on grassroots mass autonomy and answering some questions and doubts raised by people. He said: How can one billion people exercise their democratic rights and be masters of their own country? I think the most basic aspects are two: on the one hand, the people exercise the power to manage the country through the representatives they elect to form the National People's Congress and local people's congresses at all levels. On the other hand, at the grassroots level, mass autonomy is implemented, and the masses handle their own affairs according to law, and the masses directly exercise their democratic rights. In this regard, we are still lacking. Without mass autonomy and grassroots direct democracy, the soundness of our socialist democracy is still lacking one aspect, and it also lacks a comprehensive and consolidated mass foundation. In response to some comrades who believe that the grassroots masses do not understand democracy at all, even if they engage in autonomy, they cannot do it well. Comrade Peng Zhen said: How can we make the masses understand? It is not enough to just preach democracy. It must be solved through democratic practice. my country was a feudal society for thousands of years, and it was not democratic. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we took a detour. For a long time, we had a lot of things from the top down, but very little from the bottom up. We are now implementing such a method of village self-government, which is the most extensive practice of grassroots democracy. That is to say, the masses in a village are completely left to themselves to decide what to do and what not to do, what to do first and what to do later in terms of public interests and public welfare. In this way, the masses themselves have learned democracy step by step, developed democratic consciousness and democratic habits, and mastered the methods of democratic operation. In this sense, I think the village committee is the biggest "democracy training class". If the people can manage a village well through this form of direct democracy now, they may be able to manage a township well in the future. After managing a township well, they may be able to manage a county or a province well in the future, which truly reflects that our country is ruled by the people. Therefore, our party committees and governments at all levels should have an enthusiastic supportive attitude towards the village committee, understand the significance of its establishment, and adopt an enthusiastic supportive and supportive attitude. Comrade Peng Zhen pointed out that running the village committee well and implementing village self-government is a great reform and a great construction. It requires long-term, meticulous and arduous work, and we must not pursue formalities or go through the motions. There are two main dangers now: one is that the work has not been done in depth and the conditions of the masses are not yet mature, but we rush to do it and make some "half-cooked rice". The other is that too many tasks are placed on the village committee, "thousands of lines above and one needle below", which will crush it. No matter which situation occurs, it will ruin the reputation of the village committee. History will blame us if we do not do this well. We should not seek false reputation and bring real disasters, but do this work well in a down-to-earth manner. Because there was a lot of controversy during the formulation of the Village Committee Organization Law, Comrade Peng Zhen suggested that this law be called a trial law, and also stipulated the steps and methods for the formulation and implementation of the law by the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government.
On November 24, 1987, the 23rd session of the Sixth National People's Congress Standing Committee passed the Law on the Organization of Villagers' Committees (for trial implementation) with 113 votes in favor, 1 vote against, and 6 abstentions. Since then, this law on the implementation of villagers' self-government has been reviewed by three Standing Committees of the National People's Congress and one National People's Congress, and the draft has been revised many times before it was finally born. It is a match for the Organization Regulations of Urban Residents' Committees formulated by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 1954, marking the formation of my country's grassroots mass self-government system.
On October 29, 2010, the 17th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress voted to pass the revised Organic Law of Village Committees. In June of that year, there were 597,000 village committees in my country.
The previous revision of the Village Committee Organization Law contained 30 articles and was not divided into chapters. Based on the summary of local legislative experience, the new law divides the legal provisions into six chapters in the order of democratic election, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision, namely general provisions, the composition and duties of the village committee, the election of the village committee, village meetings and village representative meetings, democratic management and democratic supervision, and supplementary provisions, making the institutional design of each link of village self-government more clear at a glance.
The Organic Law of Village Committees involves the democratic rights of hundreds of millions of farmers. As "grassroots democracy" in the village, village self-government has a strong rural flavor. It shows the world the piety, respect and desire of Chinese farmers for their rights. More importantly, village self-government provides a new perspective that enables us to understand the creativity of the Chinese in the field of democracy.
(The author of this article is Zhou Dajun, Director of the Publicity Department of the General Office of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial People's Congress)
Source: Guizhou Legal News
Editor: Zhou Zhige
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