Early Charges of Fraud and Incompetence In Chinese National Elections

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26627, 25 November 1947, Page 5

Early Charges of Fraud and Incompetence In Chinese National Elections

Rec. 9 p.m. NANKING, Nov. 23. China’s first national elections are not yet completed, but already election officials have begun hearing charges of fraud and incompetence. The elections, which began on Friday and end to-night, are to elect 3024 members of the National Assembly, which will draw up a new Constitution and elect a President.

Correspondents in the major cities comment on the widespread apathy of electors and unsatisfactory voting procedures. The Nanking Icorrespondent of the New York Times says that most voters are far (more obsessed with the difficulties of life under conditions of civil war (and inflation than with the new experiment in democracy. There was a lack of secrecy in the voting, and.ballots were marked tin public with election officials and curious bystanders looking on. *

It is estimated that 70 per cent, of the total® population are illiterate. Many people who could not write and also undoubtedly could not read either passed through the polling booths without saying one word. Their voting card was handed to them by oneofficial. Another took it and wrote three Chinese characters in the three rings provided and handed back the card to the voter, who proceeded to a sealed box, where it was safely deposited. According to Hsin Min Pao, the proGovernment newspaper, an organised gang went from house to house and collected identification cards from the occupiers and then proceeded to the booths and recorded mass votes for hundreds of householders. Pro-Government sources declared that 20,000.000 Chinese men and women —one-tenth of those eligible—voted in the first national election, but neutral observers doubt whether the total reached 10,000,000.