Video protest planned against Hong Kong’s chief executive election

A local group of artists has asked Hongkongers to film and broadcast whatever they get up to on election day, however mundane, to protest what they call an undemocratic chief executive poll.

One of the artists said the videos were meant to highlight just how few people in the city will be busy voting that day.

Artist collective Add Oil Team asked people to use Facebook Live to broadcast themselves on the Sunday morning, with the hashtag #1194only. The group will then make a real-time montage from the clips.

Sampson Wong Yu-hin, one of the six artists working on the project, said the videos “could feature people eating breakfast or watching television shows.”

“Basically, we want to show the real Hong Kong; what the large majority of Hongkongers are doing instead of going to vote, because they could not,” he added, “hence reminding the rest of the world that 99.97 per cent of our population is not enfranchised to choose its leader.”

The city’s Election Committee will pick Hong Kong’s next leader on March 26, under a system widely criticised as a “small-circle” election.

The committee is supposed to have 1,200 people. But there are only 1,194 this year, because of disqualifications and members being elected in two different subsectors.

Many electors are people voted in from 38 subsectors representing various trades, labour and social welfare groups. Hong Kong deputies to the National People’s Congress and local legislators are also on the committee.

Last May, Wong and Jason Lam Chi-fai, another Add Oil Team artist, had a work on the facade of the International Commerce Centre in Kowloon. It was a countdown to July 1, 2047, when Beijing’s promise to maintain the city’s way of life under “one country, two systems” expires.

That project got suspended by the Arts Development Council.