Two independent candidates have been elected to a district people's congress in Guangdong. Theirs are the first successful grass-roots campaigns in a year that has seen an unprecedented number of candidates contesting polls across the mainland without Communist Party backing.
Guo Huojia, 59, from Xintiandi village, and 37-year-old Xiaxi village chief Li Youzhou won seats in Foshan's Nanhai district on September 28.
Guo said he secured the votes of 4,827 of the 8,136 villagers eligible to cast ballots, while The Southern Metropolis News reported that Li won 3,232 votes in his village, where 6,389 were eligible to vote. Both have been involved in fighting for the rights of residents affected by illegal land grabs.
They are the first successful independent campaigners to emerge in what has been viewed as a breakthrough year for independent candidates running for local legislatures. Previously there have been sporadic efforts by a handful of candidates not affiliated with the Communist Party to run for local congresses, but they received virtually no media coverage and few votes.
This year independent candidates - academics, journalists, bloggers, lawyers and farmers - attracted widespread publicity and mounted serious campaigns.
Guo, who began campaigning for land rights in 2007 and took the provincial land and resources department to court in August over allegations that it illegally permitted the development of land, said he was thrilled. 'I am still very excited that I was elected, even though I had expected victory,' Guo said yesterday. It was no small victory; he beat his rival, a government-backed candidate, by more than 2,000 votes.
