Sunday's election doubles as a national headcount and may offer clues to power shifts in Pyongyang
The vote to elect representatives for the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) was taking place as scheduled, the state-run KCNA news agency said, adding that voter turnout was a whopping 91 percent as of 2pm (05:00 GMT).
Those who are ill or infirm and cannot travel to polling stations are casting votes at special "mobile ballot boxes," it added.
Apart from the physical casting of votes, there is nothing democratic about the ballot, with only one approved candidate standing for each of the 687 districts.
State newspapers on Sunday stressed it was the duty of "every single person" to vote in the poll.
It was the first election to the SPA under the leadership of Kim Jong-Un, who took over the reins of power on the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011.
And like his father before him, Kim stood as a candidate in constituency number 111, Mount Paektu.
Elections are normally held every five years to the SPA, which only meets once or twice a year, mostly for a day-long session, to rubber-stamp budgets or other decisions made by the ruling Workers' Party.
The last session in April 2013 adopted a special ordinance formalising the country's position as a nuclear weapons state, a status that both South Korea and the United States have vowed not to recognise
Current position of SPA
- Worker's Party -601
- Social Democratic Party -51
- Chondoist Party -21
- Independents -13
No comments:
Post a Comment