Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2242 Appearance ([-])

"The meeting is over?" In the Hexi County Government, District Administration Commissioner and Hexi County Mayor Wang Dazhuang asked the mayor of Hexi Town who was sitting respectfully opposite him while writing something.

"It's over. Those representatives are really difficult to deal with. They have raised a lot of demands, which are not easy for us to solve." The mayor shook his head and said in a helpless tone: "Commissioner, next time you let Lao Chen go Well, I pushed two meetings just to argue with this group of people, I was really dizzy."

"Old Chen" is the deputy mayor of Hexi Town, in charge of transportation and related infrastructure work, and has been supervising the construction of a third-class national road in the countryside these two days.The meeting mentioned by the mayor just now is actually a political consultation meeting that is relatively common at the township (town) level in Dong'an. Its main function is to provide various suggestions to the township-level government and make suggestions for local construction.

The so-called Political Consultative Conference, in its original form, was actually an observer of the township government's office meeting.In the early days of the East Bank, due to the need to open up frontiers and unite people's hearts, leading cadres of some newly established townships would hold meetings in the courtyard from time to time, and allowed local people to listen outside the courtyard.

Most of the things they discussed at the meeting were related to local construction, so the common people were quite interested.Sometimes when I get excited, I will speak loudly outside the courtyard and express my views.The host of the meeting (usually the township head or the deputy head in charge) will usually pick some questions and answer them, so that the public can better understand the relevant government decisions.

It should be said that this form of irregular meetings played a big role in the early days.Especially at that time, they required the people to make huge sacrifices. While opening up wasteland and farming land, they also undertook heavy labor to build places. In many cases, they even had to fight against the aborigines. This kind of meeting can be said to have greatly won the hearts of the people. I feel that the government still serves them and can listen to their voices.

Later, with the standardization of various systems, this kind of compound auditorium meeting was also reformed, that is, each county government formulated a regular political consultation meeting for each township within the county.This kind of meeting is presided over by the first and second leaders of the township, and the representatives attending the meeting are also selected from all walks of life, including representatives of peasants, workers, soldiers, businessmen, cultural circles, etc. Anyway, there are all walks of life, but the quota is not evenly distributed, but the proportion is strictly stipulated to ensure that these representatives can well represent all classes in each township-otherwise, it will basically become the United Provinces, Spain, etc. It's a town council model, where only merchants and nobles attend the meeting, and others are completely ineligible to participate.

The date of the Political Consultative Conference is not uniform across the country, but is decided by each county government.Considering that it takes a certain amount of time for representatives from all walks of life to gather, it is generally notified more than two months in advance.Delegates attending the meeting have the right to deliberate on the work reports produced by township leaders (whether they can read or not) and put forward their own opinions.Theoretically, the township leaders do not have to follow their opinions, because according to the conference system, they only have the right to make suggestions, but not to make decisions.But considering that they come from all walks of life and are crucial to the next stage of the government's work, township chiefs often make compromises to a certain extent in exchange for their support in other areas.After all, it should come as no surprise that politics itself is the art of compromise.

To be honest, not all people in the East Coast support this kind of system.The political families at the top think it is "basically useless" and an act of "wasting people and money". It will only disrupt the order of the grassroots governments at the township (town) level, and throw their originally orderly work into chaos.These people from all walks of life often lack an overall vision, and lack professional political literacy, do not understand how the country works, and are full of unrealistic assumptions about various things-leaving politics, a matter related to the country's destiny, to the It is a completely irresponsible behavior to give a group of "semi-literate peasants", "workers who can only beat hammers" or even "actors who sing operas", "they don't understand anything"!

The faction of support is mainly influential people in society but not in politics. They may be rich, so they start to pursue something different.They talk about the Political Consultative Conference system in public places—such as teahouses and cafes—and think it is a good system for people to participate in and discuss state affairs.What?The people don't understand anything?Damn, you can't say that!What?Different people have different interests, and if they get mixed up, it will mess things up and cause inefficiency?You are disrespecting the people!Listen, you have to give the people a little thought, a little sweetness, and let them have an outlet for their accumulated grievances due to hard work, which is very good for governance.This is like a large burning boiler, the steam pressure is increasing, and you need a pressure relief valve at this time.

Of course, those who support the party are also very dissatisfied with the existing system.Especially those wealthy businessmen, they are dissatisfied with the ratio of all classes imposed by the government. They cannot accept sitting on an equal footing with a worker in dirty overalls, pointing fingers at the jobs in their hometown, and there may even be some his own employees.They demanded that the threshold of representatives be restricted, at least those with a certain amount of family property can enter, because otherwise, the so-called Political Consultative Conference will only become a joke in the end, a ridiculous occasion where everyone sits together to drink tea and chat about old times.It’s just that from the current point of view, their request is probably unlikely, and the higher-level government will not risk the disgrace of the world to offend the interests of a larger number of workers and peasants—more importantly, there are also a lot of soldiers in the meeting , most of them are not as rich as merchants, do you want to deprive them of their representation?You think about it again!

There are also quite a few people in China who do not care about this kind of meeting.They are relatively neutral, and think that this kind of meeting is definitely meaningful from a practical point of view, because it can solve some small problems that do not involve deep-seated conflicts, and these small problems are often related to the immediate interests of the people, so they can be very effective To quell public grievances and unite people's hearts-this is especially important for a country of immigrants.In addition, this system can also be used to explain the role of many large projects to the public so that they will not be too resistant when mobilizing manpower next.

But from another perspective, this kind of conference is time-consuming and laborious, and may delay production, and it is impossible for the representatives to change the direction of some major events.After all, the main leaders of the township (town) don’t need to be responsible to you. It’s great that they can learn some good suggestions and make improvements. What more bicycles are needed?Their main job is to complete the tasks assigned by their superiors, and at the same time, to use some of their own subjective initiative to do a good job in local construction and improve the people's living standards day by day, that's all.In short, it remains to be seen for a long time, this is their opinion.

As the magistrate of Hexi County and the main leaders of the region, Wang Dazhuang is still very concerned about this political consultation meeting in Hexi Town.After learning that the mayor of the town made a work report at the meeting, and promised some miscellaneous things such as building a flood control dam in a certain village, contacting sales outlets for certain factories, increasing rural theater tours, reducing the number of days of corvee this winter, etc. Afterwards, he immediately laughed and said, "You can't stand just these things? I think that when I presided over the meeting, I sometimes had to mediate disputes, act as a peacemaker, and some people even asked me to help him as a matchmaker at the meeting." , What kind of scene is that, you can never imagine. Seriously, the current Political Consultative Conference is much better than before. In the past, some people came in with two chickens, um, they came to attend the meeting and dropped by Representatives of farmers selling poultry in the bazaar. Compared with them, this kind of scene is rare now, and it is much more serious. So, what do you have to complain about? Lao Chen has a heavy task, and he has to be responsible Port widening, dredging work, and some road renovations are a lot of things, and you have to take on more if you have the guts. Moreover, it seems that our government does not care about the Political Consultative Conference and its attitude is too much. It’s not good to be perfunctory. Now the mainstream trend in the country is that more and more full-timers are presiding over meetings, and the topics are more formal. The government does not want to abolish this system in the short term, and it is impossible to abolish it. It will only pay more and more attention to it in the future, so you Don't complain to me, kid, just work hard."

"County magistrate, at today's meeting some people suggested whether the level of the CPPCC meeting can be raised, that is, to hold a county-level political consultation meeting. What do you think?"

"That's impossible! At least there is no such statement now." Wang Dazhuang said with a serious face, "Do you know what the county level is? Our country has not established provinces yet, and counties are the most important local government agencies. There are In powerful counties, such as Qingdao County and Pingan County, if you ask them to hold a political consultation meeting, what issues are discussed at the meeting? Are all government decisions made public? There is still a little secrecy to speak of Is that true? If that’s the case, the local government will be greatly disturbed by other factors when making decisions. This may be a good thing, or it may be a bad thing. Just like the recent commercial motors in the south, this is a big deal and requires government investment. Do you think it is appropriate to list this item in the work report? You have to understand that our government is a big government, which is different from the European ones. They only collect taxes and use money. Businessmen do it themselves, so they can have a high degree of confidentiality, but we are a government with unlimited responsibilities, and we have to do everything by ourselves. It is impossible to tell the people everything. The political consultative conference at the county level may develop to a certain extent in society. It will be done in the future, but it is absolutely impossible now. You have to understand this, and you can’t make political mistakes! Besides, the social and political situation on our east coast is already much stronger than that of the countries on the old road. They It is still a state of co-governance by nobles and businessmen. We at least allow workers, farmers, and soldiers to participate in politics, which is already very good. You have to remember that the political system must match the level of productivity. It’s like walking your dog on a leash , people are the level of productivity, and dogs are the system. Sometimes the dog runs too fast and walks in front of you, pulling you forward, and sometimes slows down behind you, slowing down your speed. We want What you do is to keep the dog within the range of the rope all the time, and people and dogs walk together harmoniously, this is the key point, understand?"

(End of this chapter)