Pilot urban government, how does Hanoi control power?

The Standing Committee of the Hanoi People's Council affirmed this in a speech sent to the National Conference summarizing the work of the People's Councils of provinces and centrally-run cities in 2023 and deploying the work plan for 2024, organized by the National Assembly Standing Committee, today, March 25.

Innovating surveillance to monitor power

Controlling state power is a necessary requirement in the organization and operation of the state apparatus in general and local governments in particular in Vietnam today. By performing the supervisory function, the People's Council demonstrates a fundamental role in the mechanism of controlling the power to implement policies and laws at the local level.

14th Session of Hanoi City People's Council

For Hanoi, in the context of piloting the urban government model, power control is first demonstrated through consulting and developing solutions to improve the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of People's Councils at all levels, thereby effectively performing their role as local state power agencies.

Right from the beginning of the term, the Party Delegation and the Standing Committee of the City People's Council advised the Standing Committee of the City Party Committee to issue Project No. 15-DA/TU on "Improving the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of the People's Councils at all levels of Hanoi City in the period of 2021-2026 associated with the pilot implementation of the urban government model and strengthening rural government in Hanoi City".

The delegations of the City People's Council and the People's Councils of districts and towns (without organizing the People's Councils of wards) have proactively performed the tasks within their authority, while strengthening supervision, expanding voter contact activities, receiving citizens, and direct dialogue to ensure the representative role of the people in the conditions of implementing the urban government model according to Resolution No. 97/2019/QH14 of the National Assembly .

The People's Councils of districts, communes and towns continue to innovate and improve the quality of meeting activities, questioning, explaining and supervising; strengthen the synthesis, monitoring and urging of the implementation of resolutions, conclusions and recommendations to ensure the improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency of supervising activities.

The People's Council also performs the role of controlling state power through perfecting the system of legal documents and promulgating mechanisms and policies within its authority.

The Hanoi People's Council has issued many resolutions as an important legal basis for authorities at all levels to implement, such as: Resolution on decentralization of state management of a number of socio -economic fields in Hanoi; Resolution on decentralization of revenue sources and expenditure tasks between city budget levels; Resolution on measures to accelerate investment progress, focusing on handling slow-to-implement non-budget capital projects using land in Hanoi...

These are important bases for the City People's Council to effectively control power and supervise implementation, creating systematicity and consistency in state management work of authorities at all levels.

In addition, what has made the supervision activities of the City People's Council effective in the past time is to correctly identify the issues, focus, content, and objects that need to be supervised; to supervise and re-supervise to the end; to organize public supervision, close to the people, close to the grassroots, combining general supervision with regular supervision, between supervision through documents and actual supervision at the grassroots, including supervision at the implementation level below the level of departments, districts, etc.

In particular, in the context of Hanoi implementing Resolution No. 97 of the National Assembly, Hanoi has promoted coordination between the People's Council's committees, between the supervision activities of the National Assembly Delegation and the supervision of the Standing Committee of the City People's Council, coordination between the City People's Council Delegation and the Standing Committee of the District and Town People's Councils in areas with the same supervision objects; promoted direct supervision to the People's Committees of communes, wards and towns, agencies and units under the city's departments, branches and sectors, and inspected and supervised a number of specific works and projects.

Since the beginning of the term, the People's Council, the Standing Committee of the People's Council, and the committees of the City People's Council have organized 68 thematic supervision and survey sessions; questioned 10 contents at the meetings of the City People's Council; the Standing Committee of the City People's Council organized 1 questioning session and 3 explanation sessions.

In addition, the People's Council exercises control over power through activities of contacting voters, receiving citizens, urging the settlement of citizens' complaints and denunciations, and the results of resolving voters' petitions.

Need to handle individuals and organizations that do not comply with monitoring requests and recommendations

In order for the People's Council to better exercise control over state power over the government apparatus at all levels, the Standing Committee of the Hanoi People's Council believes that it is necessary to continue to have more specific and clear regulations on the organizational structure, tasks, powers and conditions to ensure the People's Council operates effectively and efficiently.

A question and answer session organized by the Standing Committee of the Hanoi City People's Council

According to the agenda of the upcoming 7th session of the 15th National Assembly, the decision to promulgate the Law on the Capital City (amended) will be considered, including many provisions on the organization, functions, and tasks of the People's Council and the Standing Committee of the People's Council. The Standing Committee of the Hanoi People's Council recommends that the National Assembly and the Standing Committee of the National Assembly consider strengthening the tasks and powers of the People's Council and especially the Standing Committee of the Hanoi People's Council.

Accordingly, in addition to the tasks and powers prescribed in the Law on Organization of Local Government, during the time when the City People's Council is not in session, the City People's Council assigns the Standing Committee of the City People's Council to perform a number of tasks related to deciding on measures to resolve urgent and unexpected tasks, deciding on policies and adjusting investment policies for public investment projects and deciding on specific support based on the annual budget estimates... to ensure continuity and consistency in controlling state power over the government apparatus at all levels.

This agency also proposed that the National Assembly pay attention to and assign the City People's Council to decide on the number, tasks, and powers of full-time City People's Council delegates, the functions and tasks of specialized departments of the City People's Council's committees, and measures to innovate the activities of the City People's Council to ensure substance, effectiveness, and efficiency.

Hanoi also proposed to supplement the Law on Supervisory Activities of the National Assembly and People's Councils with provisions on the People's Councils and the Standing Committees of People's Councils at higher levels supervising the People's Councils and the Standing Committees of People's Councils at lower levels in performing their tasks and powers as prescribed by law; to supplement more specific provisions on the People's Councils and the Standing Committees of People's Councils supervising the promulgation of legal documents by agencies. At the same time, regulations on the mechanism for handling documents with signs of illegality by entities through supervisory activities are stipulated.

To further affirm the role and enhance the effectiveness of controlling state power over the government apparatus at all levels, the Standing Committee of the Hanoi People's Council proposed to study and supplement regulations and sanctions against individuals and organizations that intentionally do not implement, do not fully implement or prolong the implementation of the requests and recommendations of the People's Council's Supervisory Delegations in the Law on Supervisory Activities of the National Assembly and People's Councils and regulations related to the activities of the People's Council.

Source: https://vov.vn/chinh-tri/thi-diem-chinh-quyen-do-thi-ha-noi-kiem-soat-quyen-luc-the-nao-post1084669.vov