Hong Kong democrats fail to win back Legco veto foothold in by-election

Hong Kong’s pan-democrats failed on Monday to take back the power to veto their rivals’ moves, as their disqualified champion Edward Yiu Chung-yim lost his bid to re-enter the legislature.

The result in the Kowloon West constituency was a surprise reversal for the bloc in a traditional stronghold, and capped a by-election in which its vote share dropped to between 44 per cent and 51 per cent in the three geographical constituencies in play.

Across those three, the pan-democrats, the pro-establishment camp and other candidates got 47.4 per cent, 43.2 per cent and 9.4 per cent of ballots respectively. Pan-democrats used to be able to count on up to 60 per cent of votes, with that slipping to about 55 per cent in recent years.

Earlier on Monday, Gary Fan Kwok-wai and Au Nok-hin won their races for the camp – in New Territories East and Hong Kong Island respectively – restoring some parity in the Legislative Council, both blocs having 16 seats each in the geographical group. Pro-establishment candidate Tony Tse Wai-chuen took the architectural, surveying, planning and landscape seat to enlarge the camp’s dominance in the functional constituency group to 25 to 10.

And just before 8am, it was announced after a recount that Kowloon West would go to pro-establishment candidate Vincent Cheng Wing-shun, who got 107,479 votes. Yiu got 105,060 votes and lost by a margin of 1.1 per cent. 

The ballots were recounted at 5am at Yiu’s request, but only confirmed his defeat in a constituency where pro-democracy candidates won four of six seats in the 2016 general election.