Party officials must play by 'new rules'
- Source: Global Times
- [08:55 March 23 2011]
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By Fang Yunyu
In a bid to combat corruption and monitor performance among Party officials, the city's Discipline Inspection Committee handed down a new set of guidelines stipulating the accountability requirements of high-ranking Party members, the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention of China announced Tuesday.
Any Party official who is found to have abused power, incorrectly handled group protests or made decisions that result in serious accidents or financial loss will be suspended from duty, investigated or even asked to resign, according to the regulations released on the bureau's official website.
The previously instated accountability system only targeted government officials at the executive level.
In 2003, mayor Meng Xuenong was removed from his post for his failure to curb the SARS epidemic.
However, Liu Qi, the Beijing Committee secretary of the Communist Party, who at that time outranked the mayor as the executive decision maker for the city, was not held responsible by disciplinary authorities.
"The reason why Party officials should be held accountable is that they are the ones who make decisions and give guidelines," Wang Yukai, a professor at the National School of Administration told the Global Times.
Wang explained that usually governmental departments or city officials are blamed for bad decision-making, while Party officials occupying corresponding positions of power are often let off the hook.
Last year, disciplinary departments at all levels in the Chinese mainland punished 146,517 Party officials for misconduct.
According to the current system of checks on government misconduct, media are able to report on corruption and mismanagement among Party officials and justice departments can conduct legal investigations, while citizens can call relative disciplinary organs and file complaints directly.
However, a call to the city's Discipline Inspection Committee hotline Tuesday afternoon went unanswered.
