Getting away with it

• Source: The Global Times
• [21:46 May 24 2009]
• Comments

“Wang merely helps out. He does not hold an official position,” a county official, said.
Another said, “Wang has a lot of experience in industry. We can’t afford to waste his talent.”
Wang Xixin, a professor at Peking University, told CCTV, “It is reasonable to give these officials an opportunity to make a fresh start, but we need to know the reasons why they were reappointed.”
Wang Qin, who was dismissed from his post as Party Secretary of Weng’an county, Guizhou Province, following the violent protests there last year, is now working as vice-president of the financial bureau in Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province.

The public learned of his appointment not from the local government, but from a book titled New Massive Disturbance.

“Without a democratic and open process, the reappointment of disciplined official is like a game of hide-and-seek,” Wang Xixin said.

The country’s accountability system came into effect in 2003 during the SARS epidemic when the then mayor of Beijing, Meng Xuenong, was sacked for “failing to control the disease.”

Five months later, he returned to the political arena as deputy director of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project Committee under the State Council. In 2007, he was appointed deputy secretary of the CPC Shanxi Provincial Committee and last year was named governor of Shanxi.

He remained governor for just 377 days, however. He resigned in September following the collapse of an iron ore reservoir at an unlicensed mine that killed 254 villagers.

“China has no laws or regulations to stop officials who resigned from being reappointed,” Wang Yukai, a professor at the China National School of Administration, told China Newsweek.

Chapter 6 of the Temporary Regulations on the Resignation of Communist Party and Government Leaders reads, “… may make proper arrangement for those resigned leaders based on their reasons of resignation, personal conditions and job demand,” he said.

“It is the phrase ‘proper arrangement’ that makes the procedure vague and baseless, and this is where our accountability system is lacking.”

Wang Xixin said, “There are problems with the process of reappointing officials. According to the normal procedure, public scrutiny is required before an appointment can be made, but this is seldom implemented.”

“Officials are supposed to serve the people, so the public should have the right to say if they are fit to do so,” he said.