Hong Kong’s pan-democrats hope to play ‘kingmaker’ in election to choose city’s next leader
The camp aims to win a quarter of seats on 1,200-strong committee that picks the chief executive in March
Six pan-democrats elected to the Legislative Council in functional constituencies, who recently formed an alliance called the Professionals Guild, are coordinating efforts in the Election Committee contest. But they all held reservations about fielding a candidate for chief executive – in contrast to the previous two races.
The democratic camp was caught in a dilemma this year on whether to send an aspirant to challenge a pro-establishment rival at election forums or to make full use of their votes in the Election Committee and possibly act as “kingmaker” – which might help them unseat incumbent Leung Chun-ying, should he seek a second term.
“We have entered people in the chief executive race previously but it did not have much impact,” Ip Kin-yuen, re-elected to represent the education sector, said. He was referring to the bids of the Civic Party’s Alan Leong Kah-kit, who ran in 2007, and Democrat Albert Ho Chun-yan in 2012.
“We should reflect on whether the strategy we adopted in the past was effective.”