Sacked then back: a vicious circle

The mainland's official accountability system has come under fire again, with a protege of President Hu Jintao making yet another political comeback against all odds. The reinstatement of Meng Xuenong , a former Beijing mayor and Shanxi governor who was twice stripped of his duties since the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, has raised quite a few eyebrows. It was widely criticised on the mainland, and some political analysts described it as a scandal, which they said had made a mockery of the accountability system. The system, officially endorsed by the Politburo in May last year, has been hailed by state-controlled media as Beijing's major push to rein in rampant official corruption. But analysts warned the government faced a credibility crisis over its handling of disgraced officials, many of whom were given new posts soon afterwards amid widespread public anger. Xinhua reported on Monday that Meng, 60, had assumed the post of deputy secretary of the Work Committee of the Departments under the Communist Party's Central Committee. While it is not easy even for mainland experts to explain his new post, which nominally oversees party chiefs of various powerful party departments, the importance of the position cannot be better illustrated than looking at the boss immediately above him. Xinhua says the committee is headed by Hu's chief of staff Ling Jihua , who is the director of the General Office of the Central Committee, and an alternate member of the Politburo. But Zhu Lijia , a professor with the National School of Administration, said Meng's latest comeback had further undermined the credibility of the party in its much-trumpeted campaign to stamp out corruption. Zhu said almost all officials at county level or above who were forced to resign or were sacked for accountability or incompetence in the past two years had been reinstated. 'People may sympathise with Meng, because his fall from grace has largely been seen as him being used as a scapegoat, but it doesn't mean the public will support the repeated resurrection of him without a proper public vetting process,' he said. Meng was first sacked as Beijing mayor at the height of the 2003 Sars crisis to take the blame for the leadership under Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao , who took the reins a few months before and were widely accused of having covered up the deadly epidemic. He resurfaced five months later in September 2003 as a deputy director of the office in charge of the South-North Water Diversion Project, a low-profile post. Some five years later, he made a remarkable comeback as governor of coal-rich Shanxi. But frequent and often deadly mining accidents in the province took their toll on him. He was forced to resign in September 2008, taking responsibility for a huge mudslide that left at least 254 people dead. Zhu said the central government should have anticipated the resentment over the reinstatement of Meng, and sought public endorsement for the appointments of 'punished' officials. 'The official accountability system has been rendered almost useless and it's hard to imagine that people can still have confidence in it when both its effectiveness and seriousness are in doubt,' he added. His views were partly supported by a series of media reports on the swift reinstatement of many other former officials, many of which have sparked public outcry. The former head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, Li Changjiang , who was forced to step down over the melamine-tainted milk scandal in 2008, was appointed deputy chairman of a working group on combating online pornography, in December last year. Xie Zhenhua , a former head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, was sacked in December 2005 after a massive chemical spill in the Songhua River but was reinstated in January 2007 as deputy minister of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission in charge of climate change talks. Former health minister Zhang Wenkang , who was also sacked over the handling of Sars, was appointed vice-president of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation, a children's charity, in 2005. However, Mao Shoulong , a professor of public administration at Beijing's Renmin University, said Meng's comeback was in line with a regulation approved by the Politburo last year. Under the regulation on official accountability, which followed a spate of highly publicised scandals, officials who are dismissed can be restored to similar positions after a year. The regulation makes no mention of seeking public opinion, but says opinions from the party's organisation department are needed before appointments are made. 'The regulation has apparently made it easier for officials who were punished for various crises to make comebacks,' Mao said. Some mainland experts have suggested officials who were punished over accountability should not be allowed to be reinstated for at least two years. Both experts said the flawed regulation, which fell far short of public expectation, should be revised to further clarify officials' responsibility over various crises on their watch, and to allow for tougher penalties. They said Meng's appointment to an 'almost invisible' party post appeared to be aimed at protecting him from public and media scrutiny and future scandals. 'It has become a trend to reinstate disgraced officials to those positions deemed stable and safer, which usually shun media attention but enjoy similar treatment to their previous posts,' Zhu said.