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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-16 07:40

That the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued three documents on receiving petitioners this week is a sign that there is much to be desired on how grievances from petitioners have been handled by governments at the grass roots.

The documents require county governors to devote one day a month to receive petitioners and city mayors one day every three months to do the same, while officials in central government must be organized at least once a year to go down to the grass roots to investigate how grievances from the general public are addressed by local governments.

The message is that some local government leaders have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to the problems they are supposed to help solve for residents.

The latest riot caused by a fight between two villages in Hainan province is an example. Inaction or even irregularities by the local township government has been found to be the root cause. The turmoil in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces last year was also caused by what was considered to be the bad working style of local governments.

The fact that petitioners have been swarming to the capital to voice their grievances also reflects how quite a number of local governments have yet to pay enough attention to the concern of their residents.

The country's petition system is designed as a channel for governments at all levels to have adequate knowledge of what is really happening at the grass roots. It has made it possible for people to air their grievances and protest against irregularities of officialdom at various levels, thus helping to build a clean and honest government.

So it is natural for local government leaders to receive those petitioners whose problems are too complicated to be resolved by a single department.

It is reasonable for the central authorities to set the specific requirements for county and city level government leaders. Most of them will also very likely do as the documents require. But how well they can solve problems for petitioners will depend on their enthusiasm and earnestness in doing so.

They will otherwise drag their feet or refer petitioners to some departments under their leadership, or even direct them to lower-level governments without doing anything substantial to help.

The documents require local governments to organize a special mission every six months to handle complicated cases or petitioners' problems that higher authorities have referred back to them. Such missions should also make up an important part for the appraisal of their performance. Those who have done a bad job in this regard will be severely punished, according to the documents.

It will be very good if local governments do exactly as the documents require. We also need such a mechanism to properly address as many conflicts or contradictions as possible, at the exact location where they take place.

However, we do not know how seriously those irresponsible local leaders will be punished. Neither do we know whether local officials are aware of the consequences of their negligence of duty on such matters. We hope the penalty for such dereliction of duty will be severe enough to spur both the conscience and the sense of responsibility of local leaders.

(China Daily 04/16/2009 page8)