Candidates for Beijing extend Hong Kong vote while turnout drops | Election News

Candidates for Beijing have won in Hong Kong “patriotic only” legislative elections, participation was a record low among China in its crackdown on city freedoms.

30.2 percent of voters who voted in Sunday’s election are nearly half of the polls ahead of the 2016 legislature.

The elections were the first in Hong Kong since Beijing changed its election laws to reduce the number of directly elected lawmakers and veteran candidates to ensure that only loyalists to China could run.

Recent results show that almost all seats have been taken by Beijing and pro-system candidates.

Some of these candidates cheered on the central counting stage of the vote and shouted “guaranteed victory”.

Half of the directly elected seats were won by the Beijing Democratic Alliance for Improvement and Progress (DAB) in Beijing. Asked if DAB lacked a public mandate due to low turnout, the party leader said the election would improve the government.

“I don’t think this (low turnout) is directly related to the fact that citizens don’t agree with this electoral system,” Starry Leek told reporters. “I think it takes some time for people to adapt to this system.”

Elections – when only government-nominated candidates could be nominated as “patriotic” – have been described by some activists, foreign governments and rights groups as undemocratic. Major pro-democracy parties did not take part, saying they could not accept a candidate for a non-democratic poll.

Most of the dozens of candidates who considered themselves moderates, including former Democratic MP Frederick Fung, failed to get a seat, which was won by Beijing-backed rivals.

“It’s not easy to encourage people (to vote). I think they are feeling indifferent to the current situation, “Fung told Reuters.

Some foreign Democrats, such as Sunny Cheung, went to the United States to escape prosecution under national security law, saying most of Hong Kong had “consciously boycotted the election to express their disagreement with the world.”

The previous record of the legislative elections held in 1997 after the city returned to power from China was 43.6% in 2000.

The Hong Kong China Liaison Office did not immediately comment on the outcome and low turnout.

Participation is a major issue, with observers calling it a barometer of legitimacy for the most-favored-name candidate for democracy in elections, and the crackdown on China’s established national security law has jailed dozens of Democratic candidates who initially wanted to. he ran, and forced others into exile.

under election shock, the proportion of directly selected seats was reduced by approximately half a quarter or less than 20 seats.

Forty seats were filled by a committee of Beijing loyalists, and the remaining 30 were filled by professional and business sectors such as finance and engineering, known as functional districts.

The participation of these professional groups has also fallen from 74 per cent in 2016 to 32.2 per cent. Some sectors that have traditionally been relatively pro-democracy, such as education, social welfare, and law, have had a significantly lower turnout.

In 2019, the last citywide election in Hong Kong for constituency council seats, the turnout was 71%, with about 90% of the 452 seats won by Democrats.

While some observers say low turnout could undermine the legitimacy of the new legislature, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said in a statement that the 1.3 million votes cast were a “demonstration in favor of improving the electoral system.”