Elections North Korea Style

[frigidmagi]

NYTimes

North Korea on Sunday held its first parliamentary elections under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who was expected to use the polls and a newly elected legislature to elevate officials loyal to him and further consolidate his power.

North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly has served as a rubber-stamp Parliament, endorsing whatever decisions were made by the top leader and his inner circles, who dominate the top echelons of the ruling Workers’ Party, the People’s Army and the government.

In the last parliamentary election, held five years ago when Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, was still alive, a single candidate ran unopposed in each of the 687 districts, and all the deputies were elected with 100 percent support. The government reported voter turnout of 99.98 percent.

The North Korean authorities run parliamentary elections as an effective political census, a chance to check up on the whereabouts and the political allegiance of citizens, as well as the ability of local Workers’ Party officials to mobilize residents. People pile into voting booths casting unmarked ballots in rapid succession. Those who oppose the state-selected candidate are supposedly allowed to pause to cross out the candidate’s name, effectively making the process a monitored event, according to defectors from the North.

Some of the North Koreans who entered China and ended up defecting to South Korea after the famine in their home country in the mid-1990s have said they did so because they feared punishment back home for failing to show up for parliamentary elections.

On Sunday, the main party-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, urged North Koreans to fulfill their “duty” by showing a “single-minded solidarity” for Mr. Kim and his party.

“Let’s all vote in agreement!” said a party poster that has lined the streets of Pyongyang and other North Korean cities in recent weeks.

In a country where major military, party and state officials double as legislators, the new parliamentary lineup emerging from Sunday’s election will provide outside analysts a glimpse of who is rising in and falling from Mr. Kim’s favor.

Since he assumed power after the death of his father in December 2011, Mr. Kim has engineered a series of personnel changes and political purges among the elite that outside analysts said were aimed largely at eliminating potential challenges to his rule. The most dramatic purge unfolded in December when Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kim’s uncle and the second-most powerful man in the North, was executed on charges of corruption and plotting to overthrow Mr. Kim.

The Supreme People’s Assembly is one of the last apparatuses of power going through an overhaul under Mr. Kim.

In the North Korean Constitution, the assembly has the power to adopt guidelines on crucial policy issues, like nuclear weapons development, and replace cabinet ministers and members of the National Defense Commission, the top governing agency, where Mr. Jang had been a senior member.

With a newly elected Parliament filled with his own people, Mr. Kim will feel more confident in replacing Mr. Jang, his followers and others who have lost his favor, analysts said.

Mr. Kim himself was running for a seat representing the district of Baekdusan, a mountain on the central border with China. Koreans consider the volcanic mountain the birthplace of their nation.

A select group of elite members and soldiers registered themselves as voters in the district. After casting their votes on Sunday, they broke out dancing, the North’s Central Television reported.

He won with 100% of the vote of course.