“Chinese Communist Party Congress set to anoint Xi as president for life”
If you read past the headline, the article goes on to say “We can be almost certain that Xi, as the Communist Party’s general secretary, will be appointed for another five-year term,” and “Technically speaking, since the term limit has been removed, he can stay in power for life, [although] that may require some formal ceremonies after five years.”
Apparently, a theoretical 5 year term that they aren’t even completely sure will happen means for life, and “technically speaking, he can” means he will do so.
I was just going to say we have the same shit here in Canada. But nobody seems to give a shit about that.
I honestly struggle to wrap my mind around the idea of term limits = democracy. Here in the US the only reason we have them is one president did the bare minimum and gave the working class some crumbs and kept winning so they implemented term limits. It seems to almost always be implemented as a way to stop democracy.
The US only has term limits for the president though. Congressional representatives, judges, cabinet secretaries, etc., can all be there as long as they have the money and connections to be there.
In theory, I think in certain cases term limits can be a check for those in power.
Its not a blanket solution, but when I think of Gorbachev, Khruschev, Yeltsin, term limits might have helped stop their corruption.
I also think that term limits could help provide fresh faces to a socialist state that add new perspectives.
But this is me being charitable as possible, and I do see that term limits could cause or exacerbate corruption as well.
They wouldn’t though. Gorbachev was in power for not even 6 years, that’s barely more than one term. Yeltsin 8 years, so not even the commonly allowed two terms, during which he completely trampled all semblances and pretences of democracy anyway (three times at least), so what would the mere term matter for him? Khrushchev 11 years so that’s also not much longer than 2 terms. Not to mention he came to power in literal military-assisted coup. And he ultimately did not even tried to resist when he was ousted.
Interesting thing to know about term limit is their origin in current politics - straight up from ancient Greece and Rome - they served the purpose of dividing the spoils between the oligarchs, since there were always more angry rich parasites than available offices, but the infighting was creating notorious instability threatening the very foundation of thir oligarchic rule. So the terms were introduced to decrease the conflicts in the ruling class so it can focus on defending their power as a class.
Term limits were originally weapon in the class war and as you can see from the rhetorics around them, not much changed.