Liaoning cleans up after election scandal

Liaoning province has drawn lessons from last year's election fraud scandal and has cleaned up its political environment, the province's top official said on Sunday.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, disqualified 45 deputies elected from the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress in September for buying votes in a 2013 election.

Another 523 deputies to the provincial congress also resigned or were disqualified after they were found involved in voter fraud.

"The case was very serious. It was a serious breach of Party discipline and the law at the provincial level ... and it greatly harmed the people's congress system," Li Xi, the Party chief of Liaoning, said at a group discussion on Sunday during the annual session of the NPC.

"We are taking measures to ensure the ongoing elections are clean and upright," he added.

Li said the "key reason" behind the scandal was the poor leadership of his predecessor, Wang Min, who was expelled from the Communist Party of China in October for serious breaches in Party discipline.

"Over the past five and a half years, some officials in Liaoning formed cliques, while some got promotions or received money in improper ways," he said. "Their behavior seriously harmed the relationship between politics and commerce."

The economy in Liaoning, which is in northeastern China, has been gloomy for the past few years, "largely due to the unhealthy governance and problematic political environment", he said.

To prevent similar scandals, Li said the election rules have been strengthened at the provincial, city and county levels, and as result, the political environment has gradually improved.

The province has elected 40 new NPC deputies and 447 provincial legislators, he added.

An opinion piece published at the time of the scandal by People's Daily, the official newspaper of the CPC, said there should be zero tolerance for electoral bribery.

"We must unswervingly uphold and improve the people's congress system, and provide a strong institutional guarantee for the country's long-term stability and prosperity," the article said.

caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn