Pessimism in Wukan over new village polls

Villagers in the southern Chinese village of Wukan in Guangdong province turned out in force Monday to vote for new village officials, despite pessimism over the results following new corruption scandals involving village leaders.

A seven-member village committee, which includes a chief, two deputies and four ordinary members, will be elected from 40 candidates. More than 9,145 villagers out of 13,000 turned out on Monday in torrential rain and so far the voting rate is over 90 percent, Yang Semao, current Wukan deputy chief, told the Global Times.

He said he expected the final poll results to be made public Tuesday evening.

In 2011, village residents staged three rallies to protest against alleged illegal land grabs by village officials, and also corruption and violations of financing and election rules.

A re-election, hailed as promoting democracy at grass-roots level, was held after the protests and the standoff ended by appointing Lin Zulian as the new village chief.

Hong Ruiqing, one of the candidates for deputy chief of village committee, said that compared to the election in 2012, people seem to expect less from Monday's election, which has also been mired in a recent corruption scandal.

Yang, who is running for the seat of village chief, was detained for alleged bribery on March 13 but then bailed to prepare for the election.

He admitted the bribe-taking but argued he donated the 20,000 yuan ($3,216) to a local school.

Hong Ruichao, younger brother of Hong Ruiqing and another deputy chief of Wukan, was detained on March 18 and put into custody on suspicion of bribery.

Hong Ruiqing said that unlike before, none of the candidates made public speeches to win votes ahead of Monday's poll. "It seems like some government force is behind the election," she said.

A villager told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that he was disappointed to see the village leaders, who were elected by villagers with trust, had engaged in bribery.

There are only three candidates running for chief, and two are former leaders and have not achieved what the villagers wanted in the past two years, and the other is not regarded as a serious candidate, the resident said.

Current village chief, Lin Zuluan, who is up for re-election, is considered by many villagers as the "official choice" for the post, as Lin was close to the village's Communist Party committee, said Yang.

The Party committee of Lufeng, which administers Wukan, said the election would be fair and just and without any under-the-table deals.

Xiong Wei, a Beijing-based lobbyist for parliamentary democracy, said that Wukan lacks new candidates as many capable young men don't want to get involved with land disputes.

Over the past two years, more than 330 hectares of land determined to have been illegally transferred, allotted or left idle has been returned to the village, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

However, villagers have complained that the elected leadership failed to claim as much land back as they expected.