‘Strategic’ voting scheme has Hong Kong’s pan-democrats on the brink
Benny Tai’s controversial plan, which listed recommended candidates based on pre-polling, blamed for putting several veterans at risk
Several veteran pan-democrats last night appeared to be on the brink of defeat – an outcome which could lead to one-man bands for their grassroots parties, or their parties not even having a presence in the legislature.
These candidates blamed a controversial strategic voting scheme that presented a different picture of their standing from other polls and which did not recommend them to voters.
One of them, Labour Party’s Cyd Ho Sau-lan, called an emergency press conference yesterday announcing the “dangerous” situation that she faces in her Hong Kong Island constituency.
She said the strategic voting initiative, devised by Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting, was “unreasonable” after it released on Saturday night a list of recommended pan-democratic candidates, based on pre-polling. She was excluded from the list.
“ThunderGo is damaging,” Ho said, referring to Tai’s scheme. “People should not vote based on results of an inaccurate poll. We believe that the poll was dominated by radicals.”