Court dismisses Albert Ho's legal challenge to Leung’s victory
Seven months after Leung Chun-ying won the chief executive election, the High Court dismissed a legal challenge to his victory on Friday.
Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon threw out a petition from Albert Ho Chun-yan, refusing Ho’s request that he extend the deadline for filing the challenge. Ho, the former Democratic Party chairman, finished third in the March election.
Ho has argued that Leung was not duly elected because he had made false statements about illegal structures during his campaign.
But Lam said Ho’s case had little merit.
“Since Mr Ho’s case has no real prospect of success, it would not be in the interest of justice to grant him an extension of time,” Lam wrote in his judgment handed down on Friday.
Under the law, an election petition should be filed within seven days of the announcement of the election result. But Ho filed his petition three months after the election because the suspected illegal structures at Leung’s home were not revealed until then.
At issue is whether Leung made a false statement when he attacked election rival Henry Tang Ying-yen over illegal structures at Tang’s Kowloon Tong home.
Ho claimed that by criticising Tang, Leung implied he himself had made no unauthorised alterations to his house, but six suspect structures were found there. Ho is the former chairman of the Democratic Party.
