NeoDemocrats in crisis: three members quit over campaigning for non-party Legco candidate
The district councillors apologise in joint letter, explaining they thought former mentor Andrew Cheng Kar-foo needed help
The NeoDemocrats are facing a deepening crisis after three of its district councillors quit the party late Monday with an apology for campaigning on behalf of an independent Legislative Council candidate without consent.
Their words came hours after Gary Fan Kwok-wai, the NeoDemocrats’ only lawmaker in Legco, resigned from the party’s executive committee. Fan lost his bid to retain a seat in the New Territories East geographical constituency.
Yau Man-chun, Billy Chan Shiu-yeung and Sunny Chiu Chu-pong, all Sha Tin district councillors, admitted in a letter to the NeoDemocrats’ executive committee that their actions had disappointed others and that they would accept public criticism.
“We have decided to leave NeoDemocrats from today to avoid causing inconveniences to it and to shoulder responsibility of campaigning for [Andrew] Cheng [Kar-foo].”
The trio was seen rallying for Cheng in Sha Tin without the party’s consent on election day Sunday.
Cheng and Fan were formerly colleagues in the Democratic Party, which Fan quit in 2010 soon after he co-founded the NeoDemocrats with a reformist faction of the Democratic Party. Cheng also quit the Democratic Party that year; he became unaffiliated.