Opinion | Election landslide a protest vote against Beijing. But the violence will return if leaders don’t understand that

By kicking out the loyalists and voting for the resistance, Hongkongers have shown they are not afraid to stand up to Beijing’s heavy hand. But the central government still claims foreign forces are somehow responsible for the election humiliation

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Pro-democracy supporters celebrate in the early hours of November 25 after pro-Beijing politician Junius Ho Kwan-yiu lost his seat in the district council elections. Photo: AP

Published: 6:30am, 28 Nov 2019Updated: 6:40am, 28 Nov 2019

Did you feel that fresh breeze sweeping across our city in the early hours of Monday? I did. To steal a phrase from the late United States president Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign, it felt like “morning again” in Hong Kong after months of darkness.

I filled my lungs with it and felt a sudden rush of hope, the hope I thought I had lost. Images of protesters shimmying down ropes and crawling through sewers to escape the police siege of Polytechnic University flashed through my mind.

Only a government devoid of all compassion would feel no guilt about trapping teenagers inside a rotting campus, starving them out, thereby forcing many to crawl through toxic sewers. Our undemocratically-elected leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor called it law enforcement.

Law enforcement? If she cares so much about the rule of law, why did she stay mute when senior mainland officials demanded that our judges curb the violence? Why did she not rebuke her security secretary John Lee Ka-chiu for essentially telling judges how to rule to end the unrest?

Let me remind Lam that our independent judiciary rules according to the law, not to the dictates of Beijing. Hong Kong’s electorate reminded her of more than that on Sunday by raising a middle finger for the world to see. And what a defiant finger it was, pointed at both Lam and Beijing.

By kicking out the loyalists and voting for the resistance, Hongkongers have shown they are unafraid to stand up to Beijing’s heavy hand. That’s why I say the resistance won, not the opposition. As each vote count came in overnight, the breeze got fresher.