Pan-democrats unable to take unified stand over NPC vote
Electors from pan-democratic parties will not vote in unison in the election of Hong Kong deputies to the National People's Congress today because of constraints of the voting system.
The camp, which has four contestants running in the election for 36 local NPC deputies, has tried to compile a recommended list of candidates for its electors' reference.
'Our party has been trying to make a 36-person list or some guidelines for choosing candidates,' said Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong Ka-wah. 'But in the end we found there were fewer than 10 candidates who met our criteria.'
Regulations require each person on the 1,231-member election panel to choose exactly 36 candidates. Any more or fewer checks would make the ballots void.
Mr Tong said he expected some of his fellow party members would not vote at all because they did not want to be forced to support candidates of whom they did not approve.
Democratic Party vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai said his party also did not have a list of which candidates its members should vote for.
'We do have some criteria. But even if there are not enough candidates meeting them, you still need to vote,' he said.
Mr Sin said he hoped each of the two contenders from his party, James To Kun-sun and Mak Hoi-wah, would fare better than in the Democrats' previous attempt in 2002 and obtain more than 70 votes.
In a Democratic Party survey of 693 residents from January 21 to 23, 76.2 per cent said Hong Kong deputies to the NPC should be elected through 'one person, one vote'.
The election panel will today elect 36 Hong Kong NPC members who will serve the next five-year term on the state legislature. Fifty candidates are competing for the seats.
