On Sunday, “The National People Congress” of China in its annual sitting voted for abolishing the term limit for post of President.
The NPC have total of 2980 delegates. This historic constitutional amendment was passed by a thumping majority with 2958 delegates voting in favour, 2 against it, while 3 abstaining. One of the votes was found invalid. A total of 2964 votes were casted. And with this Xi Jinping has not just consolidated his grip on power but now he can rule China life time.
Earlier only 2 term was allowed for a president which was introduced by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1982 to prevent a repeat of Mao Zedong’s tumultuous decades-long reign that only ended with his death. And accordingly Xi Jinping was to step down in 2023 but now he can stay in power.
With the vote on Sunday, all three titles Xi holds – including the more important party boss and military chief roles – are free of formal term limits.
This amendment is the biggest change to the constitution in 36 years.
Though there were few voices of dissent too.
On International Women’s Day, law students at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing — Mr Xi’s alma mater — hung red banners ostensibly celebrating the school’s female students, but also satirising national politics.
“I love you without any term limits, but if there are, we can just remove them,” read one banner.
“A country can’t survive without a constitution, we can’t go on without you,” another banner stated, angering university administrators.
Former state newspaper editor Li Datong wrote that scrapping term limits for the president and vice-president would sow the seeds of chaos – in a message sent to some members of the national congress.
But it looks like these were too small to stop Xi Jinping in bringing the amendment and getting it passed.
Lets see what affect will this have on China’s relation with other South Asian countries, but as for India its definitely a bad news.
