What were voters in Hong Kong district council elections saying? They are mostly fed up – and the opposition is fuelled by anger
- Analysts have generally called the tectonic outcome the result of people expressing their anger towards Beijing, the local government and police over handling of protests
- Some might have been put off by violence, but they were turned off even more by the impasse blamed on the government
Lift worker Chan Tsz-wai’s election campaign material consisted of a badly lit photograph of him in a green football jersey and his manifesto in Chinese was scrawled out in his own handwriting.
“I neither have Photoshop on my laptop nor any designing skills,” the 27-year-old said, referring to the design software typically used to embellish such publicity pamphlets.
The contrast between Chan’s posters and that of his rival Chris Ip Ngo-tung, 39, could not have been starker. Ip appeared in a sharp black suit with stylishly coiffed hair and had a neat, bilingual message.
On Sunday, Chan nudged out Ip, a rising star of the city’s biggest pro-establishment party who had served the area for 11 years, with just 65 more votes than Ip’s 1,451.
His campaign strategy? Attack Ip’s role as the incumbent chairman of the Yau Tsim Mong District Council, by then a tainted position thanks to the roiling protests of the past summer.
Ip and 17 other chairmen of the district councils – all then controlled by the pro-establishment, often dubbed the pro-Beijing camp – were behind a joint statement backing the government to fast-track the now-withdrawn extradition bill, bypassing the bills committee’s scrutiny.