Hong Kong electoral changes: key Beijing loyalists can take up seats on Election Committee aside from ones reserved for them
- Hong Kong’s 36 deputies to the national legislature and its 202 advisory body members will be allowed seats in the committee’s occupation-based subsectors, in addition to the ones earmarked for them
- The arrangement gives the two groups even more influence in the enlarged 1,500-strong Election Committee than previously understood
Some of Beijing’s most trusted loyalists will be handed a direct seat in the occupation-based subsectors in an influential committee that oversees Hong Kong’s key elections, without having to go through a poll as their professional peers will, the Post has discovered.
It said the city’s 36 deputies to Beijing’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and its 202 members of its advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), would be allowed to register themselves under various industrial or professional subsectors in the Election Committee other than the 190 seats set aside for them, so long as they had substantial ties to those fields.
The arrangement gives the two groups even more influence in the enlarged 1,500-strong Election Committee than previously understood.
But no other details have been forthcoming and the Post has reached out to the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau for comments.