Hong Kong Legco election: once confident pro-establishment candidates make emergency appeals for votes, claiming shaky support
- Starry Lee Wai-king, chairwoman of Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, warns overall performance of her party very ‘dire’
- Traditional race dynamics upended by lack of opposition candidates, redrawn constituencies and residents taking advantage of free public transport
All the candidates belonging to the city’s biggest pro-establishment party and several Beijing-friendly veterans, including Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, seeking seats in the 10 geographical constituencies made last-ditch appeals to voters.
They attributed their lack of confidence to the lacklustre turnout rate and public perception that their seats were already secured in the election that the mainstream opposition parties sat out for the first time.
Starry Lee Wai-king, chairwoman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), joined her other nine colleagues seeking geographical constituencies seats in the Legislative Council election in issuing an emergency appeal.
Saying the overall performance of her party was very “dire”, Lee blamed the lukewarm election atmosphere which she argued could have been “more intense”. But she insisted the competition was “still very keen” despite the overhaul.
“New voters can only cast one vote, while only two candidates will be returned in each constituency,” she said, referring to the new mechanism of first two past the post, which replaced the proportional representation system that could have allowed for more seats up for grabs in a broader swathe of one constituency.
Under Beijing’s shake-up of the electoral system to ensure only “patriots” held political power, the number of directly elected seats was cut from 35 to 20 in the expanded 90-member legislature.