“Previously, all we needed to do was to stand in the election and let voters decide,” Chu, who won his seat in Yau Tsim Mong district council four years ago, said.

It is also the first citywide election the opposition announced it would participate in since the rules changed. The opposition did not take part in the Legislative Council elections in 2021.

Just 88 of the 470 district council representatives will be chosen by popular vote under the new rules, with 176 coming from the three committees.

Aspirants in both categories must obtain nine nominations before they can run.

This year’s election raised questions not only about who could qualify to run, but also voter turnout.

The 2021 Legco election had a record-low turnout of 30.2 per cent. The 4.33 million eligible voters were almost 2 per cent fewer than the number the year before.

Government officials have gone all out to encourage the public to cast their votes in the district election, but there are concerns over the changed entry criteria for candidates and that the new rules might undermine the legitimacy of the poll.

Two opposition parties – the Democratic Party and the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL) – said they intended to run, but none of their prospective candidates had received any nominations so far.

Democratic Party chairman Lo Kin-hei, who planned to stand in the Southern district southeast geographical constituency, said he hoped opposition candidates would not only qualify to run but also win.

“We believe it is still important for the people and for the future of Hong Kong to have voices in the establishment that speak common sense and logic,” he said.

He said the party’s six potential candidates had tried, but had yet to get a single nomination.

His party took 91 district council seats in the 2019 election, held at the height of that year’s social unrest. It did not take part in the Legco election held after the rules were changed.

The ADPL said its two hopefuls had also failed to get any nominations.

Centrist political party Third Side also announced last Friday that it would not field any candidates in the coming election, as its hopefuls had failed to secure the required nominations.

Some small parties led by pro-establishment figures said they had faced problems as well.

Lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun’s Roundtable named five prospective candidates, all of whom had been working in Yuen Long and Tuen Mun districts for a long time.

But only one had secured nine nominations and the rest none.

Tien said committee members contacted by his party members said they had not received any notice “from above”, so could not endorse them.

Hong Kong-based China watcher Johnny Lau Yiu-sui said the new rules made it very difficult for opposition candidates because “they are not welcomed by Beijing”.

“Only if a senior Beijing official comes out and hints that there will be room for pan-democrats, or more freedom is given to members of the three committees, can pan-democrats get nominations. But so far, no such thing has happened,” he explained.

There have been no complaints from major pro-establishment parties with just six weeks left to polling day.

The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions said it had secured most of the nominations needed for its 46 candidates.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the city’s biggest political party, said the process for its 122 hopefuls was smooth.

Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak Mei-kuen, formerly a lawmaker and district councillor, dismissed opposition parties’ complaints about securing nominations.

She said there had been “enough time and abundant opportunities” for potential candidates to get acquainted with members of the three committees.

She said between May, when the district election changes bill was introduced in the Legco, and July, when it was approved, members of the three committees had run a campaign to explain the changes and had set up street booths in all 18 districts.

Mak and mainland affairs minister Erick Tsang Kwok-wai, two key officials in charge of the election, have also played down the importance of voter turnout.

They said on several occasions that many factors, including the weather and transport, could affect numbers at the polling booths.

But John Burns, honorary professor at the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong, insisted turnout remained a measure of the election’s legitimacy.

He said district-level governance required bottom-up engagement, without which district councils were “simply echo chambers”.

Lau Siu-kai, a consultant at the semi-official Beijing think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, predicted a turnout of around 20 per cent because no controversial topics had been raised.

He said such a low turnout would not necessarily mean less legitimacy as district councils were not political bodies but “extensions of the government”.

“Beijing is also not worried that non-participation of the opposition will affect the representativeness or legitimacy of the district council elections,” he said.