A pioneering former deputy to a county-level People's Congress has urged China's top leaders and legal bodies to overturn an allegedly illegal election in which he lost his seat.
Yao Lifa, one of China's first non-Communist Party candidates elected to a county-level congress, failed to win re-election last November after five years serving the central city of Qianjiang, Hubei province.
Yao said he and 31 other independent candidates were disadvantaged by 12 alleged illegalities. All 32 failed to win seats in the 320-member congress.
The group has submitted a petition to the National People's Congress, China's nominal parliament, urging an investigation into the election. Their document is accompanied by the signatures of several deputies and 3,800 electors, Yao said.
The voters are opposed to this manipulation by the local authorities, said after meeting NPC deputies in Beijing.
Qianjiang officials ruled that about 1,000 student electors from rural areas were no longer eligible to vote in Yao's electoral district. They allowed only one deputy for 11,130 electors in another district, but a constituency based on party work units elected three deputies for 520 registered voters, according to figures provided by the independent candidates.
Another district based on government departments was allowed three deputies for 760 electors, while some 4,500 people in Yao's education-based constituency elected just two deputies.
The officials appointed virtually all of the constituency supervisors, ignoring a legal requirement to allow voters to appoint the supervisors. They violated rules on proxy votes, dispatched officials to monitor voters filling in their ballot slips, and made it difficult for electors to obtain forms to nominate independent candidates, Yao said. Some students in Yao's constituency were explicitly told not to vote for him, he said.
They know we're right, they know they've acted illegally, Yao said of the election officials.
One NPC delegate agreed to propose a motion on the Qianjiang election at the ongoing annual session in Beijing, he said.
The independent candidates have also sent copies of their petition to the Hubei provincial congress and to President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), asking for an investigation that they hope will lead to new elections in at least three constituencies.
"We want the NPC to order a new vote in these three electoral districts," Yao said.
Yao, 46, has already helped overturn several village elections in Qianjiang, where his local popularity prompted some Chinese media to hail him as a voice of the people.
The trained teacher later worked for the education committee of Qianjiang, a city that mixes farming and industries including oil and chemicals. He is now attached to a primary school, even though he is qualified to teach politics and other subjects in middle schools.
Yao describes himself as an uncompromising advocate of the rule of law, while the China Youth Daily once called him a "trail blazer" of local democracy. His mother and father were uneducated farmers, inspiring his desire to help ordinary people, he says.
Yao accuses most people's congress deputies of doing too little for the people they represent. During his five years as a Qianjiang people's congress deputy, he produced regular news sheets, which he insisted were to fulfil his legal obligation to report back to his electors.
Officials accused him of taking his duties too far, warning him that the law on local people's congresses made no provision for full-time deputies.
Local party leaders blamed Yao for blackening the image of Qianjiang by informing journalists about his uncovering of corruption, illegal village elections, and the use of sometimes violent emergency response teams to coerce farmers into paying annual fees. The leaders claimed Yao damaged the city's economic prospects by successfully opposing a plan to merge Qianjiang with two other cities.
State-run and other semi-official media publicized the beating of Yao in December 2002 by officials who claimed he snatched a confidential election document. The media continued to support him after he lost his seat.
"An unavoidable fact in Qianjiang is that the contradiction between the truth-teller Yao Lifa and some of the local government officials is getting sharper each day," China News Weekly said in a report on the disputed election.
All proposed NPC motions must be submitted to an organizing committee, which keeps most of them out of the public eye. NPC officials would most likely ask the Hubei provincial congress to handle a proposal for an investigation into the Qianjiang election.
Yao said he expected this course of action.
Whatever the outcome of his petition to Hu Jintao and the NPC, he is determined to continue serving local people in Qianjiang. At the next election for people's congress deputies, there will be even more independent candidates, he said.
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