Hunan election fraud a harsh lesson: legislature

BEIJING -- The prison sentence of a former official in Hunan for election fraud was seen as a harsh lesson to government officials with China's top legislature vowing "zero tolerance" to similar violations.

Earlier this week, Tong Mingqian, a former senior official of the province, was sentenced to five years in prison for neglect of duty by failing to properly oversee and stop election frauds in the province's city of Hengyang.

"We must not take corruption and violations in election procedures lightly and such offenses must get serious punishment," said a statement from the General Office of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee on Thursday.

The statement described the election fraud case as a challenge to China's people's congress system, the socialist democracy, as well as the country's law and the discipline of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

It also noted that some local legislature, officials and CPC members have failed to perform their due duties to ensure fair election with some receiving bribes for skewing election results.

Moreover, some candidates view fraud and corruption as "unspoken rules" during elections, brazenly using bribes to buy votes, the statement said.

"Such practices are a serious violation of law and ethics," it said.

China's fundamental political system, the people's congress system, is the best way to guarantee the people's position as masters of the country, the statement read.

The election fraud in Hengyang should be taken as a hard lesson and further efforts should be made to prevent similar violations, ensure honesty and fairness in elections and maintain the authority of the people's congress system.

The statement also vowed "zero tolerance" to any case of this kind and pledged closer supervision over the election procedures.

The legislators' awareness of the rule of law should be promoted, it added.

The fraud in Hengyang is one of the largest case in China in terms of people and money involved.

Investigations showed 56 candidates from Hengyang bribed 518 lawmakers and 68 staff at the Hunan provincial people's congress. The amount of money involved in the bribery exceeded 110 million yuan (18 million U.S. dollars).

Local courts in Beijing and Hunan this week convicted and sentenced 69 people in the case.