Exclusive | Behind the NPC vote-buying scandal: how Beijing went on the warpath after its preferred candidates lost
45 deputies from Liaoning thrown out last month over election that saw candidates backed by bribe-paying business chiefs triumph
The expulsion of dozens of National People’s Congress deputies from Liaoning province last month was triggered by the lower-level, provincial legislature’s rejection three years ago of NPC candidates recommended by Beijing, sources say.
They said top Communist Party leaders were enraged when unprecedented, large-scale vote rigging in the Liaoning People’s Congress in 2013 saw NPC candidates favoured by the party leadership fail to win election.
What Wang Min did was no different from turning a blind eye to the shortlist of NPC candidates provided by the central authorities
The scale of the scandal, which saw the party’s preferred candidates lose out to ones backed by bribe-paying business chiefs, had alarmed the party leadership, they said, and if not addressed had threatened to undermine party general secretary Xi Jinping’s game plan for the party’s national congress late next year, at which a significant reshuffle of senior positions is expected.
“A few candidates designated by the central authorities as deputies to the National People’s Congress failed to garner enough votes from Liaoning provincial legislators in early 2013,” a former Liaoning People’s Congress deputy said, adding that the unprecedented political blunder had infuriated top party leaders and sparked an investigation into electoral fraud in the northeastern province.
A special meeting of the NPC Standing Committee on September 13 voted to expel 45 of Liaoning’s 102 NPC deputies for vote buying and bribery during the 2013 election, the official Xinhua news agency reported, without detailing the amount of money involved.