In North Korea, Kim Jong-un's party does not obtain 100% in local elections

For the first time since the early 1960s, dissident votes in North Korea's ruling Workers' Party were recorded during local elections, which took place on Sunday, November 26. “Among the voters who took part in the ballot, 99.91% voted for the candidates for the provincial popular congresses” and “99.87% voted for the candidates for the city and county popular congresses,” indicated Tuesday 28 November the regime's official news agency, KCNA.

Through this absurd communication and transparency operation, the pariah country, led with an iron fist by the general secretary of the Workers' Party Kim Jong-un, is trying to “strengthen [its] legitimacy and [its] authenticity on the world stage,” analyzes the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada in a report. “This approach goes beyond internal political restructuring and extends to the construction of an international narrative, seeking to reshape perceptions of North Korea as a progressive, if misunderstood, country,” the group continues. reflection.

To vote, voters had the choice of slipping their ballot into two ballot boxes. The green one, to approve the party's candidate. Another, red, to reject it. “Voters suffering from aging or illness voted in mobile ballot boxes,” adds the regime’s press organ. They are thus 0.09% and 0.13% to have voted respectively against the candidates selected for the provincial and municipal councils.

Reporting the results of the election, the official media of the communist dictatorship announced a participation rate of 99.63% - in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, participation is compulsory... "Those who could not participating in the vote because they were on tour abroad or working in the oceans amounted to 0.37% and abstentions amounted to 0.000078%,” writes KNCA. This is less than in 2019 when the latter was 99.98%, notes Reuters.

According to a South Korean Unification Ministry official quoted anonymously by The Korea Times, the communist regime "may have manipulated" the turnout figure "in order to give the impression that the elections were free elections." For the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, “this decrease could rather indicate a slight weakening of state control.” “In response, authorities could intensify internal surveillance by tracking those who are absent and those who travel without authorization,” the report adds.

Organized every four years, these elections were the first since the country revised its electoral law in August 2023 to allow several candidates to run. But the latter are carefully chosen by the ruling party. At the end of the vote, 27,858 “workers, peasants, intellectuals and civil servants became deputies” of the various assemblies, reports KNCA.

These electoral simulacra are only formalities resembling a great patriotic celebration. On social networks, a video of the world's youngest dictator arriving at the Ryongsong complex, in the town of Hamhung, to vote to the orchestrated cheers of his compatriots.

“When respected comrade Kim Jong-un arrived at the voting booth, the workers of the complex were delighted to see him at their workplace on the important day of the election... The workers of the complex and the residents of Hamhung City were filled with ardent enthusiasm to fulfill their civic duty,” reports KNCA. The next elections, national this time, will take place in March 2024.