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Legco oath-taking saga
Hong KongPolitics

Six pan-dems enter primary race to contest two seats in Hong Kong Legco by-election

The primary race is an attempt at unity for the city’s opposition camp, as it seeks to put its best candidates forward for the March 11 by-election and reclaim its lost veto power at Legco

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The six competitors in the primary race ahead of the March 11 by-election are (left to right) Steven Kwok Wing-kin, Tommy Cheung Sau-yin, Gary Fan Kwok-wai, Ramon Yuen Hoi-man, Frederick Fung Kin-kee and Edward Yiu Chung-yim. Ken Tsang Kin-chiu (extreme right) dropped out of the race. Photo: Sam Tsang
Tony CheungandStuart Lau

Six pan-democrats are jostling to represent Hong Kong’s pro-democracy bloc and contest two of the four legislative seats up for grabs in the March 11 by-election.

Power for Democracy, which does electoral coordination for the pro-democracy political parties, said on Tuesday that it would organise a primary election by mid-January, with the winners going on to the final contest for the seats in Kowloon West and New Territories East.

The Post understands that the pro-democracy camp is likely to endorse Demosisto’s Agnes Chow Ting and pro-democracy town planner Camille Lam Tsz-kwan to contest the other two seats – representing Hong Kong Island and the architectural, surveying, planning and landscape functional constituency respectively.

Pro-Beijing politicians decry Hong Kong by-elections date clash with China’s ‘Two Sessions’

The city’s opposition camp has a lot at stake in the by-election, given that its veto power in the Legislative Council was eroded after a court stripped six pan-democrat lawmakers of their seats, finding they did not take their oaths of office properly after the Legco elections in September last year.
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Political commentators said the outcome of the primary election, as well as the political climate, would determine the opposition’s chances on March 11, even though they did well in those seats at last year’s poll.

It it is not known if the pro-independence camp – whose supporters overlap slightly with those of the pan-democrats – intend to participate in the by-election.

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Share of vote in the four constituencies
Share of vote in the four constituencies
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