China's Communist party clears way for Xi to rule indefinitely
BY PTI26 Feb 2018 12:13 AM IST
PTI26 Feb 2018 12:13 AM IST
Beijing: In an unprecedented move, China's ruling Communist Party on Sunday prepared the ground for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely after the end of his second term in 2022 as it proposed to remove presidential term limits from the party's Constitution. The CPC Central Committee proposed removing the clause that the President and Vice-President "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" from the country's Constitution, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
The removal of the term limit, which is expected to be endorsed by the Plenum of the party to be held on Monday, would give 64-year-old Xi a limitless tenure. Xi's predecessors, Jiang Zemin who was in power from 1993 to 2003 and Hu Jintao from 2003 to 2013, stepped down as general secretary of the party as well as the president under the convention of two terms to promote the collective leadership system in the one-party state.
If China pushes ahead with the proposal, Xi would become the country's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, who ruled for more than three decades through 1976. President Xi, who is also the general secretary of the CPC and chairman of the Central Military Commission, began his second five-year tenure last year, following a national Congress of the CPC.
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