... continued from previous post ...
Ms. Dugan. I will pick up on the bead and echo clearly what
Anne says, that there is a lot that happens that we maybe guess
at, we do not know empirically.
Amy, you will remember that we actually did have a chance
to go back and visit a village committee that had been elected
in Heqing County in Yunnan, where we had actually observed the
election and gone back and had a chance to speak with them.
They were also new to that process. It was hard to get any
real depth of either, yes, this is what we have learned and
here is how we are taking it, applying it, and really we have
made a lot of progress, or we do not have any idea what we are
doing and we are really just foundering here.
It was kind of a difficult interview, so it is hard to get
this kind of data, no question about it. But I do think it is
an important thing to try to get at. The training that we do
for governance, we try to make it as broad-based and moving out
to all the counties as we possibly can so that at least people
have some rudimentary tools they can use.
Mr. Liu. I will address the second question, which is the
relationship between the Party branch and the village
committee, which has a lot to do with governance.
You could have perfect elections, but who has the power?
Who controls the purse, is the ultimate issue in all
villages.
Now it is the growing contention and conflict between the
popularly elected villager and the non-popularly elected Party
secretary that are going against each other.
It is this very issue that is pushing village committee
elections to the verge of being reversed, because you have the
Organic Law, which says the villager assembly has the ultimate
power in making decisions, and then you have people working for
the grassroots Party organizations which say that the Party
branch controls all decisionmaking processes in China.
So you have a national law against the Party's internal
working measures. No one dares to say that the Party's working
measures are less important than the national laws. This is an
inherent problem that has to be dealt with down the road.
In terms of political discourse, just one thing. I think
there is a growing envy on the part of the urban dwellers, that
our peasant brothers and sisters are directly electing their
immediate leaders. What about us? We are being left behind. Are
we going through another cycle of the countryside encircling
the urban centers? So, they felt they were left behind.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Matt Tuchow.
Mr. Tuchow. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China
is charged with developing an annual report, and in that
report, making recommendations to Congress and to the President
on how to go about promoting rule of law, including
democratization in China. I am wondering if you have some
recommendations for us on what those recommendations in the
report should look like.
Ms. Dugan. Is it for all of us?
Mr. Tuchow. For all of you, yes.
Ms. Dugan. Well, let me start here. The answer is, yes,
please recommend that we are as fully funded as we can be. What
I would love to have the opportunity to do, is to respond to
you in a more comprehensive fashion after I have given it some
very serious thought.
What occurs to me, based on IRI's longstanding experience
in China in trying to work with reformers there, is that the
road left ahead is a long one and there are boulders in it, but
there are many ways to maneuver around those boulders and there
are many, many opportunities to not only accelerate the kind of
program that we have begun and that Carter Center has been
involved in, that NDI does, and the other NGOs, and Ford
Foundation, not only accelerate it, but expand it. To be honest
with you, the only thing that holds us back is the dollar
signs.
Ms. Thurston. I would certainly echo that. One thing I
would say, and it is very trite to say, but there are 1.3
billion people in China. There are 930,000 villages. There are
900 million people in the Chinese countryside. What we are
doing right now is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket.
It is a huge country with lots of people, lots of problems,
and lots of opportunities for cooperation. Yes, it takes money.
It would certainly take a lot more people here on the American
side, too, to cooperate at a broader level. But the opportunity
is certainly there.
Mr. Liu. Yes. I think the report has to acknowledge that
there are meaningful village committee elections in China and
that these elections should be supported.
Members of the Administration, Members of Congress, and
their aides, each time they go to China, need to raise this
issue. They need to say, we want to know more about these
elections, just to raise the profile of this issue.
Instead of criticizing that you do not have human rights,
why do you not just go ahead and say, we heard you have
elections. Could we talk a little bit more about these
elections? Could we observe these elections?
I think the Chinese saying is, ``It is easier for the
foreign monks to burn incense.'' The Chinese officials can talk
about this, but they will not get the necessary attention. But
once a visiting American Congressman or Senator raises this
issue, then this is an issue that the leadership is going to
look at.
In terms of funding, I have already said it. I think the
Carter Center's experience is that we are extremely short-
funded. We have to beg United States and European corporations
to give us funds.
Most of these corporations say, what you are doing is very
risky. We do not want to be portrayed as an organized company
that is getting involved in providing funds for political
activities. So, it is pretty hard for us, but we are determined
that we are going to continue our work there.
Mr. Tuchow. I think I speak on behalf of Ira and John in
saying that if you do have further thoughts on recommendations,
we would welcome them.
Mr. Wolf. Absolutely. We would certainly appreciate any
material you want to provide to supplement your presentation.
Are women candidates emerging in village elections, or is
this mainly a male activity?
Ms. Dugan. Let me give you the good news. Invariably, we
see women candidates emerge for perhaps one of the member
positions. Usually there is a chairman, a vice chairman, and
some number of members. It is not unusual to see women emerge
as candidates for member, or sometimes vice chairman, not as
often for chairman.
But in these two urban election committees, the elections
that I had a chance to view in May, in the first election the
incumbent was a male challenged by a female. He won reelection.
In the second election, two females. The older one won.
They were both highly articulate. They were both very well
experienced, very impressive presentations to the voter
population who had assembled.
It was very compelling to me to see that they were the two
candidates that the resident representative assembly had put
forth in this one particular urban community of some 2,000
voters.
Mr. Wolf. I know you have not observed hundreds of
thousands of villages, but as an off-the-cuff estimate, are 99
percent plus of the candidates males?
Mr. Liu. That is correct. I think less than one percent of
the village committee chairs are women. But in most cases,
there is a woman member on the village committee. That woman is
usually the chairman of the women's federation in that village.
But in Shandong Province, what we saw is there are no women who
came out to run.
In Hunan, the provincial measure stipulated that the
village committee will have to have one woman member, otherwise
they will just keep voting until they get one elected. So, the
provincial stipulations are different.
In some places there are people saying, we have got to have
one woman member. In other places, they just do not give any
attention to this. But, overall, the women are drastically
under-represented at the village committee level.
Mr. Wolf. Can I get some examples of the most seriously
fraudulent problems you have observed in the elections?
Ms. Dugan. In my experience, fraud is not the issue. You do
not see purposeful fraud committed, you see incompetencies,
people who are the election workers, but they do not understand
why a certain thing needs to happen or how it needs to happen.
Again, let me go back to my experience in Guangxi with these
urban elections.
Mr. Wolf. I would rather stick to the village elections,
please. If it is not fraud, do you observe cases of heavy-
handedness, corruption, fixed elections, pressure from the
establishment--all the kinds of things that election observers
are supposed to be observing? Did you see any of this or does
none of this exist in the villages that you have observed?
Mr. Liu. We have seen township officials onsite giving,
sometimes, subtle or naked messages to the voters. For example,
in 2000, in one place where we observed the election, the
township minister was saying, to elect the Party secretary as
the chair will actually save you money because you are
combining the two positions together and it is going to reduce
your burden. That is, of course, a veiled attempt to manipulate
the voters' decisionmaking process.
Others that we do not have opportunity to observe but we
have read and heard of, are making empty promises during the
campaign speeches or when they were making the tours inside of
the village, such as, if I am elected I am going to help you
reduce the fees you are going to pay to the government.
But a growing number of people are talking about vote
buying, that is, making actual cash payment, or taking people
to dinner, and some other offerings such as packs of
cigarettes, and those things. The MCA's approach to this is, if
there is vote buying, that is an indication of competition. It
is better than no competition.
But the law itself is insufficient in terms of defining
what can be characterized as vote buying, because there are no
clear definitions as to what can be considered as vote buying.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. John.
Mr. Foarde. I think sometimes we say the words ``observe
elections'' or ``monitor elections,'' but do not really
understand what we are talking about.
Could you, for the record, give us a sense of what specific
activities you do when you are out in the field as either
monitors or observers, if there is any difference?
Ms. Dugan. Certainly. When we first arrive at, usually, the
county level--or let me start at the provincial capital. We
meet with the provincial Bureau of Civil Affairs, who are
involved with local governance issues, and usually have a
relatively thorough briefing from them about the nature and
history of elections in that particular province.
At the county level, sometimes township, we have a chance
for a more in-depth briefing about the particular elections
that we will have a chance to see and what is happening in
those particular villages, and some of the very raw data
regarding them.
We try to have as full an understanding before we actually
go to the election site of what is the economic base, what
issues are driving this particular election, what do the voters
in this particular village care about, so you have got a kind
of foundation to stand on.
The process itself of observing the elections, as Anne has
already started to describe, usually they are at a schoolyard.
It is a meeting. It begins at 9 o'clock in the morning.
There is a great sense of rite, of ceremony regarding these
elections, a very ordered presentation of steps that are taken,
with great ceremony in demonstrating that the ballot box is
empty, and in the passing out of ballots, in the summoning of
voters.
Then, in a way that is unique and also helps to ensure that
there is a transparency in the process, most of the time after
the ballots have been cast the counting and the marking of
ballots under each candidates' name is done in the same public
area, and the voters remain and they watch that process.
Then there is the announcement of the results, and what we
might call ``peaceful transition of power'' so the new village
committee is presented with their certificates then and there.
That usually is the sum total of the observation process
itself. Again, we are missing a step, and that is what happens
next.
Ms. Thurston. And also what happens before the primary, the
selection of candidates, which we do see sometimes.
Mr. Liu. Yes. One of the things we try to do is to find out
exactly what happened before the election, the nomination
process. We want to see the records. We want to see how many
candidates were nominated by the villagers and how they were
reduced to the official roster of candidates. So, that is one
thing we try to find out.
On the election day, of course, in all elections, foreign
organizations get to observe. There is a certain level of pre-
election preparation for the Westerners to come. There will be
officials visiting right before us to make sure that the
setting is good, that the villagers are all going to come out.
Occasionally there will be a cash payout to the voters, or
at least a bottle of water, instant noodles, those kinds of
things, to get them to come over.
Two other things we observe on the election day will be the
number of proxies, and also how the roving ballot boxes are
used, particularly at elections at higher levels. The abuse of
proxies and the use of the so-called roving ballot boxes are
just intolerable. That reduces the quality of the elections.
It basically makes the election a charade when you just
allow one person to carry nine votes or more without checking
the voter IDs or authorization. When you get a roving ballot
box to households, there is no integrity to that voting process
at all. So, these are the two issues we try to find out each
time we go there.
Ms. Thurston. This also sort of touches on--I did not get
to respond to Ira's question--the issue of fraud. I think the
fact is that the presence of foreign observers has a
significant impact on how the election works and impact to the
good. I mean, people are very, very careful and very attentive
to make sure that all the rules are being followed as they are
watching.
Mr. Wolf. Holly.
Ms. Vineyard. Thanks.
How do you measure the effectiveness of what you are doing?
Maybe this is related, but have you seen any signs, in the
areas that do not have local elections might be clamoring to
have them?
Mr. Liu. By law, all of the villages--I think as of now the
number is reduced to 730,000; a lot of the villages merged--all
have to have elections. If there are no elections, that is
illegal and the villagers can report it. Of course, there are
areas where there were no elections being held because the
local officials were opposed to it. But they have to have it.
The MCA and the local Department of Civil Affairs can go down
there.
But the problem is that the law itself does not have any
muscle. That is, if a village does not carry elections and this
is a problem of the township officials, there is no way for the
Ministry of Civil Affairs or the local Department of Civil
Affairs to deal with it. In the law, there is no measure or
penalty and the court will not take up any suits filed by the
peasants.
So now it is very clear to the MCA scholars that the law
will have to be revised to make it useful and applicable, so
when the violations do occur the perpetrators can be punished,
as required by the law.
Ms. Dugan. The first question you asked is the bane of my
existence: how to measure whether what we are doing is making a
difference, what kind of impact does it have, because it is
very hard to come up with empirical data to support it. There
is no profit and loss statement at the end of the month to let
us know whether things are working. The anecdotal evidence is
what propels us.
To a certain degree, our experience in Fujian also was
buoying, because recommendations that we had made from our
first observation took root. They were put in force. We got to
go back and see, 3 years later, that they took that seriously.
They took it to heart and they made it part of the body of
regulations that they use now in Fujian province. So things
like that, perhaps, give you some sense of being able to
measure the effectiveness of what it is we do, but it is a
very, very difficult thing. I thank you for the question.
Mr. Liu. I want to add to what Liz just said on the Fujian
model. Before, elections in Fujian were always held in a
schoolyard and people would have to come. But then the
officials were invited by the IRI and other U.S. agencies to
observe U.S. elections, and then they adopted the polling
station method.
That is, it will be open at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning
and it will close at 5 o'clock, which is being applied to all
models. I mean, that is one thing they have learned through
this interaction between U.S. involvement and the officials
over there.
Also, the unlimited access. The IRI, the Carter Center, the
Ford Foundation being able to see the elections, to participate
in internal discussions, the meetings, I think is another
measurement of the success, and also the way they take our
recommendations very seriously.
In the revision of the law, they did take into
consideration all the recommendations by the foreign observers.
I think these are all, again, anecdotal reflections of the
success that United States agencies have had in China.
Ms. Thurston. Can I just add, you mentioned places that do
not have elections. Yawei is saying that now, mandated by law,
every village is supposed to have elections.
I do not very often get the opportunity to go down to
villages without somebody from the Ministry of Civil Affairs or
a provincial level Ministry of Civil Affairs office taking me
there, but I have on a number of occasions been able to be
taken down to villages by Chinese friends.
I have to say that in those few cases that I have had that
opportunity, I have gone to villages that did not seem to have
village elections. Sometimes there were just too many
contradictions, it was too complicated, we could not do it, so
the Party secretary is serving also as the head of the village
committee.
The other sense I have gotten, which I think that you do
not get when you go down to look at village elections, is the
strength of informal leadership at the village level.
The people that we are seeing being elected are, as I have
said, generally young, they are entrepreneurial, they are go-
getters. But I have been struck, in the villages I have been to
with friends, of how much respect the older members of the
village get.
In two cases I am thinking of, both of those older people
had also been head of the collective during the time that the
village was a production brigade. So, there is a lot of
informal leadership that takes place at the village level too
that we really do not have the opportunity to see.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Chris. |
