After snub, Regina Ip gets ready to pound pavement
Fresh from being snubbed for place in Leung Chun-ying's cabinet, lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee will soon be out courting middle class votes in her Hong Kong Island constituency as she readies for a run in the Legislative Council elections.
The New People's Party chairwoman and former secretary for security said she would be fighting 'many candidates' for the key voting bloc, such as Liberal Party chairwoman Miriam Lau Kin-yee and Democratic Party vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai, in the September poll.
Ip is expected to be joined in the elections by her deputy chairman Michael Tien Puk-sun, who may contest the polls in New Territories West. He won a district council seat in the constituency last year.
'As the NPP is a fairly new party, we won't be fielding candidates in all five districts,' Ip said.
Long rumoured to be one of Leung's choices for an executive councillor, Ip was left off the list days after she helped veto the government's plans to have Leung's restructuring plan marked as a priority item in the legislature's agenda.
The NPP's announcement came as more candidates threw their hats in the ring for the race on the 70-seat Legco race.
Lo Wai-kwok, who nominated Leung in the chief executive election in March, announced his candidacy in the engineering constituency, a seat occupied by Raymond Ho Chung-tai since 1998.
Education Convergence vice-chairman Ho Hon-kuen, who lost to Democrat Cheung Man-kwong by a significant margin in the education constituency in 2008, would run for the seat again. Cheung has said he would not run again, meaning Ho could face Fung Wai-wah, who succeeded Cheung as president of the Professional Teachers' Union.
Meanwhile, social work constituency lawmaker Cheung Kwok-che, of the Labour Party, also announced his decision to race for re-election.
