Public Letter from Citizen and Former Shanghai Lawyer Peng Yonghe to the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government (II)

Based on the Constitution, I am exercising my citizens’ rights of supervision and reporting:

1, To hold the relevant responsible personnel of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice accountable for dereliction of duty in failing to supervise the Shanghai Bar Association’s formulation and promulgation of the Shanghai Bar Association Election and Recall Rules;

2, To order the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice to perform its duty of supervising the Shanghai Bar Association and require it to formulate and promulgate the Shanghai Bar Association Election and Recall Rules within a specified time limit;

3, To review and thoroughly investigate the documents issued by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice and the district and county justice bureaus under its jurisdiction that infringe upon the rights and interests of the Shanghai Bar Association and lawyers, as well as the relevant personnel’s responsibilities under Party discipline and national law. For example, Hu Jing Si [2015] No. 2

Copied to: the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, the Ministry of Justice, the All China Lawyers Association, and all lawyers in Shanghai

Chen Jining, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, and Gong Zheng, Mayor, hello!

According to the Lawyers Law, the justice bureau has a statutory responsibility to supervise and guide the bar association, and supervising the bar association’s institutional development, such as the Election and Recall Rules, is the statutory duty of the justice bureau. Yet, in the nearly 30 years since the Lawyers Law was implemented in 1997, the Shanghai Bar Association still does not have a systematic, complete, and specifically operable set of election and recall rules. Clearly, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice has already failed to perform its duties, and the relevant responsible personnel are already suspected of dereliction of duty!

I have previously:

1, In 2012, stood on the rostrum of the Yunfeng Theater on Beijing West Road in Shanghai’s Jing’an District and called on the 1,000 lawyers present to support direct elections for the bar association.

2, In 2015, filed a complaint alleging electoral fraud in the 10th election of the Shanghai Bar Association.

3, In January 2018, filed a lawsuit with the court against the Shanghai Bar Association: “confirming the invalidity of the election of the 10th president,” “financial disclosure,” and “membership status.”

4, In March 2018, mailed a letter proposing that “the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice urge the Shanghai Bar Association to formulate and promulgate the Shanghai Bar Association Election and Recall Rules.”

(The notice of classified handling issued in the justice bureau’s reply stated——Regarding your opinions and suggestions on formulating special rules for the election and recall of lawyers’ representatives, directors, and the president of the bar association, our bureau will provide feedback to the Shanghai Bar Association, which will consider them in its future work in light of actual circumstances. In response to this reply, I again sent a letter to the justice bureau demanding that it urge the Shanghai Bar Association to formulate election and recall rules——and pointed out that if the articles of association and rules mentioned in your reply contain specific, operable provisions for completing elections, then I, Peng Yonghe, will crawl back to Jiangxi.

5, In 2021, I sent a draft of the Shanghai Bar Association Election and Recall Rules that I had prepared myself to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice and the bar association, recommending that they formulate and implement them as soon as possible. I received no response whatsoever.

6, In 2022, I again wrote to Lu Weidong, director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice, recommending that he perform his duties and urge the Shanghai Bar Association to formulate and promulgate the Shanghai Bar Association Election and Recall Rules. Yet, to this day, there has still been no response whatsoever.

Why has the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice acted this way?

——Take, for example, the election of representatives for the 10th Shanghai Lawyers’ Congress: Jing’an District’s Hu Jing Si [2015] No. 2 states, “3. Confirmation of representative candidates: The candidates nominated as representative candidates shall be assessed by the leading group together with the Jing’an District Justice Bureau’s Lawyers’ Party Committee, after which the representative candidates shall be determined and reported to the Party committee of the district justice bureau.

Whose commands does the Lawyers’ Party Committee follow? To whom is it accountable? Do the two of you know? Do all citizens know?

——Why do I feel that this is an election of “Party representatives”! What are your views, both of you?