'Finding' people to vote for village and residential area chiefs

In the 2024-2027 term, the election of village heads and residential area heads in Hai Duong will be carried out according to the procedures and regulations in Decree No. 59/2023/ND-CP dated August 14, 2023 of the Government detailing a number of articles of the Law on Grassroots Democracy Implementation in 2022 (this Decree takes effect from August 15, 2023).

Accordingly, localities organize elections in the form of community meetings or conferences with the requirement that over 50% of households in the village or residential area attend.

Compared to organizing voters to go to the polls on the same day as before, organizing community meetings creates favorable conditions for voters to directly express their opinions about the candidates being introduced.

Voters also have the right to self-nominate and nominate personnel for election as village and residential area chiefs right at the meeting. If the voting result reaches a rate of more than 50% of voters present agreeing, the personnel will be included in the election list.

By November 19, the districts of Binh Giang, Ninh Giang, Cam Giang, Nam Sach, Thanh Ha, Tu Ky, Chi Linh City and Hai Duong City had organized elections for village and residential area chiefs.

Localities organize elections for village and residential area chiefs on holidays to facilitate voter participation. Some places even combine the election with the National Great Unity Day to attract a large number of voters to attend.

However, the common point is that many places have to send out questionnaires to each household because they cannot organize community meetings. Most localities have a rate of less than 50% of villages and residential areas that can organize community meetings.

Along with not fully promoting democracy at the grassroots level, the failure to organize community meetings causes localities to spend more time arranging teams to go to each house to distribute ballots to collect opinions. This often has to be done during the day to avoid incidents in preserving ballot boxes, so it is very time-consuming.

Many villages and residential areas with large households had to spend millions of dong to rent tents, sound systems, etc. to organize community meetings but failed. Many voters arranged their work to attend the meetings but had to leave because less than 50% of the households attended.

Reality shows that village and residential area heads play a very important role in the work and movements at the grassroots level. Since 2024, Hai Duong has increased the allowance of the Party cell secretary who is also the village and residential area head to a level that can reach more than 7.5 million VND/month, higher than the salary of many civil servants.

The increased allowance level aims to attract more qualified, capable, prestigious, healthy people to work at the grassroots level, meeting increasingly high job requirements.

To reduce pressure on this team, localities currently encourage without setting a “hard” requirement for the implementation of the Party cell secretary concurrently being the village and residential area head. This helps expand the opportunity to introduce candidates and self-nominate with truly capable and prestigious Party members and people in villages and residential areas.

After this village chief election, the relevant districts, towns, cities, departments and branches of the province will have assessments, advice and proposals to make the organization of village and residential area chief elections in the coming terms more effective and suitable to the actual situation and characteristics of the villages and residential areas.

For localities that have not yet held elections, it is necessary to continue to strengthen and diversify forms of propaganda and mobilization, and have more attractive activities to attract a large number of voters to attend meetings to elect village and residential area chiefs.

Each family and voter needs to exercise their own rights and responsibilities to elect worthy people to take on local work.