A judge in Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong Province, said 70 per cent of the cases he had handled met intervention from local government leaders in the execution of the verdicts.

What the judge said is not a lone example. The percentage of intervention may vary in different places, but the phenomenon is widely seen. It is only too often that a local government leader writes to the head judge of the local court, asking, or in most cases pressing, for lenient treatment of the penalized party.

Besides the publicly despised nepotism, local protectionism is a main reason for the administrative intervention, according to some judges interviewed by the Xinhua News Agency in Jinan.

Local protectionism is often practised using some high-sounding pretexts.

Some local governments issue official documents prohibiting the execution of verdicts made by courts from other jurisdictions. Some localities stipulate that a court must seek approval from the government before sealing up a company's account. Some governments even provide a protective shield for law-breaking enterprises in the name of "creating a favourable environment for investment."

This behaviour openly violates the principle of rule by law. But the local governments choose to do so to protect "local interests."

In many cases, companies penalized by the court decisions were major contributors to local economic growth, which is a main index to the local officials' credit in their political career.

Some local governments accept "donations" from companies for spending beyond the official budget.

These political credits and donations account for the "local interests." Pursuit of such interests makes the officials forget their duty to social justice and to the principle of rule by law.

Some other officials may not deliberately want to defy the principle of rule by law. In the back of their mind, however, they think they have the right to exercise administrative power in any case that concerns treatment of a citizen or a corporate body.

Although it has been years since China began to emphasize the role of law in the running of the country, the old concept of governing by leaders' will still remains strong in many officials' subconscious.

Reluctant to part with the infinite power they once enjoyed, these officials are unwilling to accept the reality that they had to sit doing nothing about a legal case within the area under their jurisdiction. They would try to do something to influence the case.

Thanks to the campaign launched by the central government to popularize legal knowledge, the public has developed a sense of rule by law. They also have learned how to protect their interests by resorting to legal means.

However, the awakening of such a sense among the public is not enough. A just attitude and a strong sense of duty on the part of government officials are more important.

Those officials who intervene in legal cases to cover up their personal and their relatives' crimes or wrongdoings should be removed from their posts and be investigated.

Those who meddle in courts' work in the name of "protecting local economic growth" should be disqualified, because they have protected the interests of a certain group of people at the cost of social justice. They are unworthy of their jobs.

Those who like to issue orders to courts out of their traditional obsession with power should be sent to the Party school again to learn the most fundamental theory about running the country by law - no administrative power is allowed to intervene in legal proceedings.

(Business Weekly 12/23/2003 page1)