Last Saturday marked the start of the race for Legislative Council seats, with the finishing line set for September 7. As usual, the focus will be on the Hong Kong Island constituency, where eight groups of candidates are competing for six seats. But the fiercest battle will take place in Kowloon West, where voters will have to elect five lawmakers from nine lists of some 19 candidates.
Competition is tough across the board in all geographical constituencies, because the pro-democracy camp cannot agree on consolidated lists of nominations. In Kowloon East and New Territories East, there are two lists of candidates from the Democratic Party alone. Winning a seat is all that matters, and it is all in the name of democracy.
However, since the timetable for direct elections has been set, democracy is no longer an election issue. Facing keen competition from inside and outside their camp, democrats will have to find other issues to win over voters.
That partly explains why the issue of political appointees dominated the media for over a month. As a result, the chief executive's popularity dropped a few points but, so far, there is no indication that the fuss will have any effect on the election outcome.
On the other hand, the Olympics will take place in the middle of the election campaigns, and there are rumours that some preferential measures will be announced soon as part of the new phase of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement. This is definitely not good news for the dissidents.
On the other hand, inflation is gradually affecting the public, and the pan-democrats can be expected to pick up on this interesting theme. The HK$11 billion package announced by the chief executive before the end of the last Legco session has taken some wind out of their sails.
Little attention has been given to the functional constituencies, but they are nevertheless just as interesting. Candidates tend to announce their entry into the race late in these constituencies because, once announced, every dollar they spend will be counted as campaign expenditure. But practically all incumbents in the 30 seats are facing challenges, which is unprecedented. This will disrupt many implicit rules of the game and establish new ones.