Hebei villagers disrupt ‘illegal’ election

Villagers from a village in North China's Hebei Province, who have seen two failed elections in a month, have vowed to petition higher level governments demanding punishment for those responsible for the most recent election on Saturday that they claimed had been rigged.

More than 100 villagers in Panguanying village, Qinhuangdao city, crashed into vote-counting rooms at a local primary school, and disrupted the election for village head, which they deemed "illegal."

"We don't recognize this election because the village election committee members were not recommended by us villagers. The committee cheated on the votes and threatened villagers," Pan Zuofu, a vegetable farmer in his 40s, told the Global Times.

Pan Zuofu and dozens of villagers held a red banner saying "Please return the right to vote to villagers in Panguanying" at around 10:30 am, two hours after the election started, demanding Ru Xuejun, a town official in charge of supervising the election, explain why an election villagers considered unfair still went ahead.

This is the second election in the village in a month since the last one was sabotaged by local gangsters taking away ballot boxes on November 29.

The election has become key to the village's fight against the continuance of a garbage incineration project co-funded by the Qinhuangdao city government and environmental technology company Zhejiang Weiming, which villagers feared would lead to pollution since the environment assessment for the factory had been proved to be a forgery.

Candidates vying for the position of village chief were reduced to two from seven in the last election. Pan Zhizhong, a 49-year-old farmer who is also the favorite candidate among villagers, and Ren Jun, who works at a local abattoir owned by the village's former Party secretary, were left to compete for the position.

Pan Qingguo, a 50-year-old villager, told the Global Times that he was offered 100 yuan ($16) for each ballot for Ren. Most villagers confirmed his information but several of them denied that they had been approached with money in exchange for votes.

"I trust the choices of villagers and I believe this election will be fair and transparent," Ren, who put up a notice on the wall of village committee promising to stop the construction of garbage incineration factory in the village and work for the villagers' benefits, told the Global Times before the election, without replying to inquiries about the alleged vote-buying.

When the Global Times reporter tried to enter the site as village election committee members carried ballot boxes in, one member showed his staff ID and pushed the reporter out of the primary school.

"I don't want to vote this time because Ru was unfair in the elections," Gao Ruli, a 61-year-old villager, told the Global Times, showing his consent paper to support Pan Zhizhong as the new village chief. More than 830 voters among the over 1,400 eligible voters in the village have signed the consent paper to support Pan Zhizhong.

The villagers confronted Ru over the election.

"If you have anything to report to the county, you all will be welcome in my office. But I can't announce that today's election is illegal," Ru said, ignoring the reports of numerous villagers.

Villagers grabbed voting boxes from staff members and discovered there were 483 votes but only 250 voters' IDs registered.

The disruption of the election at Panguanying village is not an isolated case in China, which introduced village elections in the late 1980s.

Electoral fraud such as vote-buying has become a major complaint among villagers, whose awareness of their rights has been surging in recent years.