10th NPC standing committee to convene final session

BEIJING—The 32nd and final session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, is to convene from Feb. 26 to Feb 28.
An important task at the three-day session was to get well prepared for the first 11th NPC session, to be held in March, according to a statement issued after a meeting of the chairman and vice-chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee on Friday. Wu Bangguo, NPC Standing Committee chairman, presided over the meeting.
Participants at the February session would deliberate the draft report on the work of the 10th NPC Standing Committee and a report on examining the qualifications of deputies to the 11th NPC. Lawmakers would also deliberate the draft agenda of the first 11th NPC session, the draft presidium and secretary-general name list, and a draft name list of non-voting delegates of the session.
During the February session, lawmakers would continue reviewing a draft amendment to the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law and conduct a first reading on a draft amendment to the Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons. An electoral conference, which is to elect 12 deputies from the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) to the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), held its first plenary meeting here on Saturday.
The conference, composed of 325 Macao residents with Chinese citizenship, was chaired by Sheng Huaren, vice chairman and secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee. The entire process of choosing new NPC deputies from the Macao SAR will go on “fairly, justly and openly,” he said at the plenary meeting.
He also pointed out that, in the past eight years, Macao’s NPC deputies “not only participated in the administration of state affairs, but played an important role in helping the SAR government carry out its work in accordance with the law.” Out of the electoral conference members, the first plenary meeting chose nine persons to form a presidium, with Macao SAR Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah voted as its executive chairman by the presidium members.
The presidium will preside over the future meetings of the electoral conference, and is in charge of announcing the list of deputy candidates and the result of the election. The nomination period for deputies to the 11th NPC will be accepted between Jan. 7 and 18, and election will be held on Jan. 27, according to a bulletin released by the presidium.—Xinhua