My TakeHigh-risk strategy may just pay off for Hong Kong opposition

Choice of four candidates, including two who may be disqualified from running, could see the public sympathy vote come into play

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Activists Nathan Law Kwun-chun and Demosisto's Agnes Chow Ting meets the media at High Court, Admiralty. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 1:18am, 18 Jan 2018Updated: 1:40am, 18 Jan 2018

The opposition has come up with four candidates for the Legislative Council by-elections in March. The choices represent a high-risk strategy but a calculated and possibly clever one.

The Democratic Party, which has long enjoyed an electoral stronghold on Hong Kong Island, has swallowed its pride in working with political upstart Demosisto. The latter’s Agnes Chow Ting is just 21 and, having been a veteran protester, has no real political, policy – or for that matter – job experience.

The thinking seems to be that the angry and youthful voters who sent radical localists Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang, Yau Wai-ching and Demosisto’s Nathan Law Kwun-chung – all disqualified now – to Legco in 2016 are still there, and angrier than ever.

Of the four candidates, Edward Yiu Chung-yim has the most recognisable name, thanks to his disqualification from the architectural, surveying, planning and landscape functional constituency seat over improper oath-taking.

The so-called primaries held by the Power for Democracy on Sunday attracted more than 26,000 “voters” who picked Yiu for the Kowloon West race, and Gary Fan Kwok-wai of the NeoDemocrats for New Territories East.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Choice of four candidates, including two who may be disqualified from running, could see the public sympathy vote come into play

Choice of four candidates, including two who may be disqualified from running, could see the public sympathy vote come into play