Vote against incumbents surface in North Korea's 1st multi-candidate polls

ANKARA

After voters cast their ballots in North Korea's first multi-candidate local elections, the country on Tuesday reported some votes against incumbent candidates in a rare acknowledgment of dissent.

On Sunday, North Korea held polls to elect provincial governors, mayors, and local assembly members with multiple candidates in some districts for the first time.

Some 27,858 workers, peasants, intellectuals, and officials were elected as deputies to provincial, city, and county people's assemblies, Pyongang-based Korean Central News Agency reported.

"Among the voters who took part in the ballot-casting, 99.91 percent voted for the candidates for deputies to provincial people's assemblies and 0.09 percent voted against them (while) 99.87 percent voted for candidates for deputies to city and county people's assemblies and 0.13 percent voted against them," the report said.

Meanwhile, turnout in the local elections, held every four years since 1999, was 99.63%.

Pyongyang reported votes against sitting elected officials for the first time in any election since 1956.

"The move appears to be intended to show that people in North Korea adequately expressed their opinions in elections, but this is still far from the guarantee of people's suffrage," South Korea's Yonhap News reported, quoting officials from its Ministry of Unification.

*Writing by Islamuddin Sajid