Provincial officials announced Wednesday that the election in Wukan Village in Guangdong was invalid after villagers protested against unfairness of the election and village electees' wrongdoing in recent months.

Wang Yemin, head of the investigation team from the provincial government, said that the election was invalid and another election would be organized soon.

The February election of village heads drew complaints from the villagers. The investigation team looked into the election on Dec. 20.

The team found that the February election had several violations, such as the candidates list was not made public and some candidates also acted as election organizers, Wang said.

Since September, complaints about land use, financing and the village election have escalated to violent demonstrations of Wukan villagers in the city of Lufeng, which administers Wukan.

Earlier this month, local police sealed off the village exits to stop protesting villagers, whose anger was reignited by the sudden death of a village representative who was in police custody.

The powder keg was not defused until last Thursday when Zhu Mingguo, vice secretary of the Guangdong provincial committee of the Communist Party of China, held a direct dialogue with villagers, admitted that the protesting villagers' main requests were reasonable, and promised a "fair and open" investigation into the grievances.

Zhu said that the villagers' complaints focused on land use and the lack of transparency in the governance of village affairs, and it was particularly intolerable that village heads secretly sold farmland.

"I'm looking forward to a fair, open and transparent election. I believe that people we elect will protect our interests," a villager Zhang Bingchai said.