Unifying the Secretary and Chairman: Choosing the wrong person is very dangerous
A Secretary and Chairman of the People's Council or People's Committee who lacks expertise, practice, and ethics is very dangerous.
Regarding the policy of unifying the position of secretary and chairman of the People's Council and People's Committee at district and commune levels with sufficient conditions, which was just concluded by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the 6th Central Conference, former Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Nguyen Tien Dinh said: "If we can do that, it will be very good."
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Former Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Nguyen Tien Dinh. Photo: Hoang Long |
According to him, unification not only reduces titles, but also makes the operation of the apparatus more effective, quick, and decisive. Because according to the process, if those two positions are separated, the Party Committee will meet, give opinions, and then deploy to the People's Committee and People's Council.
If the secretary is also the chairman of the People's Council or People's Committee, after receiving comments from the Party Committee, it will be implemented immediately, without any further delay.
"The more compact the apparatus, the more efficient it is," the former Deputy Minister emphasized.
High unity will do
This also means streamlining a series of staff and titles, directly affecting the "rice pot" of many leaders. How can we solve this problem harmoniously, sir?
This question has been raised many times.
The unification only affects those who are leaders, the number of which is not much, the state will have policies to arrange suitable positions. If there is high unity along with policies to support officials, it will be resolved.
As the General Secretary said, the implementation of the Secretary concurrently being the Chairman of the People's Committee at the district and commune levels is only implemented in places with sufficient conditions. So, in your opinion, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions to implement this model, and in which places can it be implemented?
The first condition must be human. The Secretary and Chairman of the People's Committee, that is, the unification of the Party and the executive branch, has a lot of work, requiring people with enough capacity to carry it out, otherwise it will be very difficult.
Second, there needs to be high consensus and unanimity among the Party Committee and government, and among the staff. High unity will make it happen.
As a 2-in-1 position, the most important thing is still the person. If the secretary is also the chairman of the People's Council, there is still a favorable factor because for a long time the People's Council has led collectively, but with the People's Committee being the executive body, the secretary and chairman of the People's Committee will have a very important role.
Choosing the wrong person is very dangerous.
What qualities does a person need to have to hold this 2-in-1 role?
The person holding the role of both secretary and chairman of the People's Council/People's Committee must have both capacity and ethics to operate the apparatus smoothly and effectively.
If you choose someone who is not professional, practical, or ethical, it is very dangerous. At that time, giving too many responsibilities to one person will be a burden that makes the work not go smoothly, not daring to do it, having to ask for collective opinions, or there is a situation of fear so hiding behind the collective. This can easily lead to mistakes, easy to lose cadres, causing harm to society.
What many people worry about when implementing the unification model is the issue of controlling power to avoid the situation of "both playing football and blowing the whistle"?
Our Party has talked a lot about measures to control power even before unification, because each position has specific power. But unification will make power more concentrated. If we choose people who are not well trained and thoroughly understood and use power in the wrong direction, it will be very dangerous, and in fact there have been such cases.
Therefore, when power is in hand, it is important to have supervision, to have control mechanisms, to increase democratization, to increase inspection and supervision at higher levels and internally.
With authority comes responsibility. When violations are discovered, they must be dealt with resolutely and thoroughly. If a good monitoring mechanism is implemented, it can be controlled.
Lessons in power control from the case of the Da Nang Party Secretary When implementing unification, attention must be paid to monitoring power, not only by the Party Committee, but also by the people through socio-political organizations, and democratic centralism must be stronger. As in Da Nang, the Secretary and Chairman of the People's Council, due to lack of supervision from the people, could not promptly detect violations. When there were voices and opinions from the people, the Party did not focus on democracy, leading to mistakes and disciplinary action as recently. (Mr. Nguyen Tuc, member of the Presidium of the Vietnam Fatherland Front) Power monitoring The person holding these two positions must depend on the will of the people. Will the people vote for the person holding these two positions? It is necessary to create an environment to monitor state power when it is imported. On the contrary, if it is not controlled and imported, the problem becomes even more dangerous. The principle of controlling state power is to "counterbalance ambition with ambition". (Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dang Dung, former Head of the Department of Administrative and Constitutional Law, Faculty of Law, Hanoi National University) |
According to Vietnamnet.vn