Hong Kong chief executive election was ‘a farce’, aide to Regina Ip claims
Government’s former information chief also says ‘clandestine meetings’ took place in Shenzhen involving Beijing officials, liaison office staff and voters
Pinkstone, who has known Lam for many years from his civil service career, remained confident she would do well in her new post, but he claimed the former chief secretary would need “strong support to mend fences between the legislature and the public”.
Ip, the New People’s Party chairwoman who was forced to drop out of the race because of insufficient nominations, said she had read Pinkstone’s piece but had “no comment”.
In the piece, Pinkstone accused the liaison office or its associates of making phone calls to all 1,194 members of the Election Committee responsible for picking the city’s leader. He said the calls urged support for Lam, backed by Beijing, and asked them not to nominate Ip.
“The biggest threat to Lam was Ip because of her experience and thorough manifesto, so she was the obvious choice to be thrown under the bus,” he said.
The chief information officer for Ip’s campaign also claimed “clandestine meetings” were held in Shenzhen involving Beijing officials, members of the liaison office, and voters, convening almost every weekend prior to the election.
“This is insider information. During the campaign I met many electors [and] many of them had spoken of the phone calls made to their friends,” Pinkstone wrote in an email reply to the Post’s enquiries. “No one is prepared to name names.”
When asked what should be done to ensure the poll’s fairness, Pinkstone said the undesirable developments could have been avoided had the city’s political reform package been approved in 2015.
“The proposal should have gone through and the nominating procedure could be dealt with later. At least there would be a foot in the door and Hongkongers could choose the chief executive regardless of the number of nominations secured.”
Pan-democrats had criticised the Beijing-decreed reform plan for enabling the 1,200-member nominating committee to effectively screen out candidates deemed undesirable to Beijing.
Pinkstone stressed he decided to speak out on the election without Ip’s knowledge.
“[It is] a personal reflection of how I saw the way the elections were being run,” he said. “I was shocked into writing this piece.”
Additional reporting by Phila Siu