Official adultery cartoon Article/Sina columnist Li Yinhe
Recently, the charge of "adultery" can often be heard when replacing cadres. This practice has two characteristics different from the past. One is that in the past, the implicit term "style problem" was usually used, but now the always white term "adultery" is directly used; Second, in the past, the dismissal of cadres was often accompanied by economic or political problems other than adultery, but now they will be dismissed simply because adultery has no other problems, such as Yi Junqing of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau.
Because the vast majority of cadres who commit adultery are accompanied by economic or political problems, the practice of replacing cadres simply because of adultery is often ignored. In fact, whether personal moral character should be the reason for dismissing cadres is a controversial issue. According to different social and cultural backgrounds, different countries have different practices, and it is interesting to analyze them slightly.
The relationship between personal morality and qualifications can be divided into the following types:
The first is that personal morality becomes a necessary condition for qualification. In other words, if a cadre has personal moral problems, such as adultery and prostitution, he or she will lose his or her qualification after being exposed. At present, this is the practice in China.
The second is that personal morality has a certain impact on qualifications. If there is a personal moral scandal about the incumbent officials, their qualifications will be seriously challenged. Even if they will not be dismissed, some people will take the initiative to resign due to their damaged image. Even if they do not resign, they will also be somewhat disheartened and become the object of public ridicule. In the year when Clinton and Lewinsky were involved in the scandal, I happened to be doing academic exchanges in the United States. When talking with university professors, a female professor made a zipper movement and said: American people say that Clinton is a bad zipper. Compared with Europe, American Puritanism is prevalent and belongs to this type.
The third is that personal morality has no effect on the qualification. This kind of society and culture will strictly distinguish an official's personal morality from his qualifications. Personal moral errors such as adultery and whoring are regarded as personal privacy, and their impact on his qualifications is not as great as moral flaws such as irregular behavior of the diploma. Although adultery and plagiarism are moral errors, the public will think that the former has little to do with qualifications, while the latter raises questions about the ability of the wrongdoer to hold a post. Most European countries belong to this type.
I prefer the third type, which strictly divides personal privacy and qualifications for public office. The reason is simple: an official can perform his duties without becoming a moral model. Whether a person is a moral model is not necessarily related to his governance ability. Naturally, there will be moral models like Mother Teresa and Lei Feng for everyone to follow, and moral models may not be able to govern.
Chinese culture is the most difficult to accept this concept, because personal morality is not only regarded as a necessary condition for qualification, as we do now, but also as a sufficient condition for qualification in Chinese history, such as filial piety and honesty in the Han Dynasty. At that time, only moral models could become officials, or they could become officials after becoming moral models.
The biggest problem with this practice is that moral models do not necessarily have the ability to govern, so their political achievements are not necessarily good, and sometimes they are forced to become hypocrites. For example, in the Han Dynasty, filial piety and honesty were cheated. Requiring all officials not to have an affair will also make them live too depressed, because sociological statistics show that the incidence of extramarital affairs is about 40%. In other words, 40% of officials will be tortured by whether they engage in extramarital affairs or are dismissed from their posts. As a result, they will either become hypocrites (secretly) or suffer mental breakdown (reluctantly).
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
