Hong Kong goes to polls in first vote since democracy protests
This new generation of pro-democracy campaigners unexpectedly won a handful of seats in Hong Kong’s District Council elections following the vote on Sunday (Nov 22) despite the odds: hampered by a lack of resources and name recognition against their more established counterparts. Lau said if counting five members who left the party, they actually earned one more seat.
Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood’s Frederick Fung Kin-kee ran around the Lai Kok polling station in Sham Shui Po in a last-minute attempt to get support. Since Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, political tensions between the former British colony and mainland China have continually flared up.
Hong Kong went to the polls Sunday for the first time since huge pro-democracy protests gripped the city, in a key test of public sentiment.
At least 40 candidates who took part in the democracy protests, or were inspired by them, ran in the elections, local media reported.
Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing applauded the high turnout, saying more people are concerned about political affairs after last year’s debate. Beijing says city voters have to choose from a list of candidates it has approved.
Kris Fong, a 28-year-old administrator who was voting in Hon Kong’s northern district of Yuen Long, said, “After last year’s umbrella revolution I feel that, however insignificant our vote might be, it’s our only legitimate way to tell the people… up north what we are thinking”, referring to powers in Beijing.
Student leader Joshua Wong, 19, the teenage face of the democracy movement, was eligible to vote for the first time.
At 9.30pm – or an hour before polls closed – a total of 1,362,449 voters out of 3,121,238 had cast their ballot, an impressive 43.65 percent turnout rate.
The figure was slightly higher than at the same stage four years ago.
The protests failed to persuade China to allow a fully democratic vote in 2017. “I wanted to see if I had the ability to continue to push the democratic movement”.
Exit poll results released by the University of Hong Kong’s public opinion programme, sponsored by i-Cable, had showed Fung and Ho’s constituencies and that of another pan-democrat heavyweight, James To Kun-sun, were too close to call.
Dozens of “Umbrella Soldiers” stood for election yesterday.
The election of the so-called Umbrella Soldiers – named after the 2014 demonstrations in which activists used umbrellas to guard against tear gas and pepper spray – reflects continued support for political change in the Chinese-ruled city.
Analysts say it is unlikely the democrats will significantly increase their seats, outgunned by the well-funded and better organised pro-government camp.
Sonny Lo Shiu-hing, a political analyst and professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, says that young candidates being elected is an “encouraging sign” that “youth participation has been entrenched” in Hong Kong.
For a few voters, however, local daily-life issues outweighed politics.