Establishment of Supervisory Commissions Has Fundamental Imp
Commissions to Be Made New State Organ
With the establishment of the supervisory commission in Chongzuo, on Sunday, China has completed the establishment of supervisory commissions at the provincial, city and county levels, an important development in its move to institutionalize the anti-graft drive.
Analysts said the interference and role of local governments in anti-corruption efforts is expected to significantly drop with the new supervisory commissions, while those of the central authority of the Communist Party of China () will be strengthened.
The new supervisory commission system has merged the anti-corruption system with the Party's discipline inspection committees and absorbed the anti-corruption forces of the procuratorates.
"In the past, the Party's discipline inspection committees would open a corruption case as an internal Party disciplinary matter, say, for a year, and then transfer the case to the prosecutors. The procuratorate would take another year to investigate the same case and prosecute. With the new supervisory commissions, disciplinary and legal investigations can be conducted simultaneously, thus making the new system more effective," Ren Jianming, an anti-corruption expert at Beihang University, told the Global Times on Monday.
"The single anti-corruption agency increases the independence of anti-graft work. The concentrated power also increases its authority," Ren noted.
Under the previous system, the local leadership and the superior anti-corruption agency led the local anti-corruption agency. In the new system, local supervisory commissions will be supervised by their superior commissions and the local people's congress.
"Thus, the role of local leadership, its interference and arbitrariness, in anti-graft efforts has shrunk," Ren said.
Change in Govt Structure
China is expected to list the supervisory commissions as a new type of State organ in the revised , which analysts say will fundamentally change the country's government structure.
A CPC proposal on the amendment to the Constitution published on Sunday states that supervisory organs will be listed together with State administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs, all of which are created by people's congresses to which they are responsible and by which they are supervised.
A new section on supervisory commissions is being proposed to the third chapter, entitled "The Structure of the State" in the Constitution, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
"No other country has elevated a supervisory agency to the state level … In the past, China's government structure was yifuliangyuan, meaning the State Council and two judicial organs - the supreme court and the supreme procuratorate. After revising the Constitution, supervisory organs will be elevated to the same rank," Ren said.
Although the people's congresses will be given the power to elect and remove the directors of the supervisory commissions at the corresponding level, analysts said stricter supervision on the commissions is needed.
Ren said experts have been suggesting that the people's congresses establish specific committees to carry out the work.
"The people's congresses only convene a limited number of times a year. But the centralized power of the supervisory commissions requires supervision on a daily basis," Ren told the Global Times.
(Source: Global Times)
