A total of 18 people became official candidates of deputies of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) to the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) of China after a preliminary election held here Thursday.
Of them, 12 will turn out to be NPC deputies following the final election scheduled for Dec. 7.
The candidates, who obtained the larger number of votes in a ballot of the members of the Conference for Electing Deputies of the Macao SAR to the 10th NPC of China, were selected from 20 eligible registrants.
The election methods stipulate that a person who wants to contest should be at least 18 years old and a Macao resident of Chinese citizenship. He or she must also have obtained at least 10 nominations for his or her election registration to be effective from the 203-member electoral conference and shall be elected by the secret ballot votes.
During the 15-day nomination period from Nov. 5 to Nov. 19, a total of 26 Macao residents obtained registration forms for running for the election and 23 of them returned their forms. However, three of them did not get 10 nominations or more and thereby fell short of the qualification for being a candidate.
The preliminary round of election had to be held as the maximum number of nominees cannot exceed the quota of deputies by 50 percent, or 18, in line with relevant election methods.
Thursday's election was chaired by Edmund Ho Hau Wah, executive president of the presidium of the electoral conference, and was attended by 193 conference members.
The conference members first chose the chief ballot examiner and a list of other scrutineers.
The members then cast their votes by secret ballot and elected the official candidates. The name list of 18 official candidates was announced by Edmund Ho Hau Wah. The presidium then held a meeting and issued a public services announcement to publicize the list of the official candidates.
(Xinhua News Agency December 6, 2002)
