Chinese Politburo To Be Voted In For The First Time

The Chinese Communist Party in a bid to strengthen its inner-party democracy, will vote in members for the politburo and its Standing Committee, media reports said.

President Jiang Zemin and his colleagues have decided that the Central Committee will vote in the new politburo, which will be formed at the end of the 15th party congress this week, Hong Kongs English daily South China Morning Post reported.

The 300-odd members and alternate members of the 15th Central Committee will be selected on Thursday by the 2,048 delegates at the ongoing Congress, which opened here on September 12.

The Central Committee, which is chosen after every five years, had the constitutional right to pick the politburo members but the members merely clapped their hands to endorse top-echelon name lists determined several weeks in advance by heavyweight cadres such as the late Deng Xiaoping, the paper reported.

 

Quoting party sources, the paper said history will be made on Friday when the Central Committee calls its one-day first plenum to finalise the leadership lineup.