Temporarily maintain the local government model in implementing apparatus arrangement
Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra affirmed that the overall assessment of the organizational model of the entire political system is still being carried out, accordingly there will be adjustments and arrangements but temporarily the current organizational model of local government will remain unchanged.
On February 15, the National Assembly discussed the draft Law on Organization of Local Government (amended).
One of the issues that National Assembly deputies are concerned about is that the draft Law maintains the local government organization model as currently prescribed. Accordingly, all administrative units at the provincial, district and communal levels have a local government organization consisting of the People's Council (HĐND) and the People's Committee (UBND), except for special cases prescribed by the National Assembly.
Delegate Pham Van Hoa (Dong Thap delegation) expressed his agreement with maintaining the current model, needing both People's Council and People's Committee and "it is impossible not to have People's Council at the commune level".
However, he suggested that the Drafting Committee further study the urban government model to ensure consistency across the country, not only for centrally-run cities but also for provincial cities.
Regarding the organizational structure of the district-level People's Committee, delegate Pham Van Hoa said that in the draft Law, the organizational structure of the district-level People's Committee does not include members of the People's Committee who are the district police and the district-level military command.
According to delegate Pham Van Hoa, there will be no more district-level police, but the district-level military command will still operate with many important tasks in the locality. Therefore, he proposed adding the head of the district military command to the list of members of the district-level People's Committee to ensure reasonableness and efficiency in operation.
Meanwhile, delegate Ha Sy Dong (Quang Tri) emphasized that the Party's policy through many recent congresses has directed the need to innovate the organization and operation of local governments in accordance with urban, rural and island characteristics.
Practice also shows that after amending the Law on Organization of Local Government in 2019, Da Nang City, Ho Chi Minh City and now Hai Phong City have been allowed by the National Assembly to implement one-level urban government and have shown to bring very good results.
"In the current conditions, we are implementing a revolution to streamline the organizational apparatus, so the local government organization also needs to be redesigned to suit the characteristics of urban and rural areas. This is not contrary to the Constitution," said delegate Ha Sy Dong.
Therefore, the delegate suggested that the drafting agency should study that while the local government organization in rural areas has not been innovated, it is necessary to strongly innovate the local government organization in urban areas to promote development.
Ensuring smooth operation of local government apparatus
Explaining and clarifying a number of issues, Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra emphasized that the principle of building the Law on Organization of Local Government (amended) is to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of local governments according to the motto "locality decides, locality does, locality is responsible".
The Minister said that one of the important goals of the draft Law is to build a tight legal corridor, remove bottlenecks and shortcomings in specialized laws to ensure effective implementation of the mechanism of decentralization, delegation and authorization between the Central and local governments.
"We propose that this is a fundamental and comprehensive amendment. However, there are also immediate stability issues to ensure the smooth operation of local governments during the current process of restructuring the apparatus," said Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra.
The Minister cited that there are currently 177/259 specialized laws detailing the authority of the Minister, 152 laws regulating the authority of the Prime Minister, 141 laws mentioning the authority of the People's Council and People's Committee, and 92 laws with overlapping content between levels of government. Without a clear legal mechanism to resolve these shortcomings, the implementation of decentralization and delegation will face many difficulties.
In addition, the draft Law will continue to inherit and adjust to clarify the tasks and powers of the People's Council, People's Committee and Chairman of the People's Committee, ensuring clear responsibilities between individuals and collectives, avoiding overlap in state management. Local authorities will need to issue specific regulations to effectively implement the new regulations.
Regarding the local government organization model, the Minister said that the current model will be maintained because we continue to have an overall assessment of the organization model of the entire political system, accordingly there will be adjustments and arrangements but temporarily it will remain the same.
"If we do not temporarily maintain it, there will be a gap in the operation of the local government organization system as well as the local government model. As for urban governments, we will still implement them as per the National Assembly's Resolution.
In the context of our restructuring of the apparatus, the Ministry of Home Affairs is coordinating with the Central Organizing Committee to conduct a comprehensive assessment and study of the apparatus organization model, including the local government system. I would like to ask the delegates to support this plan, temporarily stabilizing it like that," said Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra.
