Pyongyang: Turnout in North Korea’s single-candidate elections touched 99.99 percent this year, state media said on Tuesday. The election turnout saw an increase of 0.02 percent from the previous elections that took place in 2014.
The turnout was touch short of 100 percent as people working abroad or in oceans could take part, according to North Korea’ official KCNA news agency.
Interestingly, list of 687 elected deputies reported by the news agency did not include Kim Jong Un. In March 2014 Kim was last elected to the assembly in the first elections held since he came to power. In those elections, he ran from Mount Paektu constituency, a mountain known to be the sacred birthplace of his late father.
Millions of voters in North Korean went to the polling booths on Sunday to accept a new lineup of just short of 700 members for the upcoming session of the legislature, the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA). The election takes place every five years to elect what is widely seen as a rubber-stamp legislature.
“All the electors participated as one in the election to cement our people’s power as firm as a rock,” the state media report said.
“The election will strikingly manifest the fixed will of our people to firmly trust and uphold to the last Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un despite storm and stress,” the ruling party’s official daily said in a commentary on Sunday, “All the people have to fully display through the election the invincibility and might of the DPRK advancing by dint of the single-minded unity,” it added.
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