D-Day in battle for the middle class

As this column reaches readers, many will be preparing to vote in the latest round of district council elections. For the first time in the history of Hong Kong, voters will be able to elect local representatives who can vote for the chief executive, in 2012, and stand for election as lawmakers in the Legislative Council elections next September. On this historic occasion, it is hardly surprising that a record number of candidates - 915 - were validly nominated for election in 412 constituencies across 18 districts throughout Hong Kong.

This year's elections are not only record-breaking in the number of candidates, but also in the diversity and divisiveness of the political parties or groups taking part. Apart from the well-established ones like the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong and the Democratic Party, splinter groups spawned by the latter and the iconoclastic League of Social Democrats are threatening to dislodge well-established figures and drive a wedge into the pan-democrats' camp, already weakened by internecine squabbles, a preoccupation with ideological issues and controversies surrounding foreign domestic helpers' right-of-abode claims.

The pro-establishment camp is also seeing the emergence of new forces that could have the same cannibalistic effect on the electoral outcome. In several constituencies, candidates from traditional pro-China groups are being challenged by newcomers with a civil service background, or new parties vying to represent the middle class.

Overshadowed by the continuing right-of-abode saga and, above all, the much more momentous chief executive race effectively under way, the competition in some hotly contested constituencies is actually more intense than the routine and low-key media coverage so far suggests. Pundits are watching closely whether political heavyweights like the DAB's Lau Kong-wah, trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, the Democratic Party's leader, Albert Ho Chun-yan, and Frederick Fung Kin-kee, founder of the Association for Democracy and the People's Livelihood, all of whom are serving legislators, can withstand fierce challenges from well-prepared opponents with strong local roots.

Voter turnout for district elections has traditionally been low - 35.82 per cent in 1999, 44.1 per cent in 2003 and 38.83 per cent in 2007, with the unusually high turnout of 44 per cent in 2003 being the direct outcome of voters' anti-government sentiment hot on the heels of the debacle of the national security legislation that summer. With the abortive 'evil law' and the traumatic experience of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak fresh in the memory of voters, an exceptionally large number turned out to voice their anger and chose representatives from the pan-democratic camp.

This year, however, the wheel has come full circle. The overarching issue, other than the chief executive race, which has given rise to widespread dismay and anxiety about unbearable social and economic pressures, is the foreign domestic helpers' claims for right of abode. Candidates from the Civic Party, whose leading members have been heavily involved in right-of-abode litigation, have become the butt of attacks from adversaries. The party's attempt to brush off its responsibility by putting the onus on the Immigration Department to keep out the maids has so far done little to stop the haemorrhage.