This story is being published by POLITICO as part of a content partnership with the South China Morning Post. It originally appeared on scmp.com on Nov. 25, 2019.
The anti-establishment reverberations from almost six months of street protests swept through polling stations across Hong Kong on Sunday, as voters in record numbers roundly rejected pro-Beijing candidates in favor of pan-democrats.
The tsunami of disaffection among voters was clear across the board, as pan-democrats rode the wave to win big in poor and rich neighborhoods, in both protest-prone and non protest-afflicted districts and, in downtown areas as well as the suburbs.
Less immediately obvious was whether there was a generational divide in the way the people voted, but ousted pro-establishment district councilors suggested that young, first-time voters had been instrumental in dislodging them from their perch.
By 7 a.m., the pro-democracy camp had gained a majority in at least 12 of the 18 district councils, taking 278 seats.
All councils were previously under pro-establishment control from the 2015 elections.
Youthful, fresh-faced candidates, many of whom were active in the anti-government protests roiling the city over the past six months, were among prominent winners of the historic district council elections which had a record turnout of 2.94 million voters, representing 71.2 per cent of registered electors, up from the previous figure of 47 per cent in 2015.
In a stunning setback that could force an internal reshuffle, the city’s largest pro-establishment party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), which fielded 179 candidates, won only 21 seats as of 5.30 a.m. on Monday.
Their chairwoman Starry Lee Wai-king defended her seat in To Kwa Wan North, Kowloon City district. Lee fended off former lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung of the pro-democracy camp.
The dramatically changing color of the 452-member district council map from the predominantly blue stronghold of the pro-Beijing ranks, which held 292 seats before the polls, to the pan-democratic camp’s yellow hue became clear from early on as counting began when polls closed at 10.30 p.m.
The pro-Beijing camp had only managed to secure 42 seats, as of 7 a.m. Monday. Independents, who are not endorsed by either camp, have won 24 seats.
Although the district councils handle local matters and have no direct say over the chief executive’s program, the elections were seen as a barometer of support either for the anti-government protest movement or for the embattled leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her handling of the roiling unrest.
With the thrashing suffered by the pro-Beijing camp, the government’s allies, it would appear Lam’s position could become more even more difficult, even as she herself on Sunday tried to frame the elections to be one about district council matters.
The major upsets of the night occurred barely an hour after vote counting began, with Junius Ho Kwan-yiu suffering the ignominy of being the first and most high profile casualty of the anti-establishment backlash, followed soon after by veteran lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun.
Ho, who became a hated figure for the pro-democracy movement in the city after he was filmed shaking hands with men believed to have been involved in a vicious attack on protesters and passengers at Yuen Long MTR station on July 21, did not win any sympathy votes despite suffering a knife attack just three weeks before the elections.
Ho lost to democrat Cary Lo Chun-yu who unseated him from his Lok Tsui constituency in Tuen Mun, winning 3,474 votes while Ho netted only 2,278 votes. The third candidate, Chiang Ching-man, got only 49 votes.
In a Facebook post, Ho described his loss as “strange” and “regrettable.” He won more votes this time but not enough to keep his seat.
“I’m moved, the opposition overwhelmed me with congratulations. It is not a bad thing to transform their brutality to harmony,” he wrote.
Lawmaker Tien lost his seat in Discovery Park in Tsuen Wan to pro-democracy candidate Lau Cheuk-yu. “I respect the electorate’s decision,” Tien said.
The politician, known for his outspoken ways and dubbed the bad boy of the pro-Beijing camp, said he had the same number of votes as previously but suspected he lost out because of first-time voters.
“If that’s true, it means young people are no longer insensitive to politics,” Tien said, adding the government would need to listen to the voice of young people.
Other pro-establishment bigwigs were among the biggest losers. DAB’s Holden Chow Ho-ding, Horace Cheung, Vincent Cheng, and Edward Lau were among those ousted.
Cheung, who is a member of Lam’s executive council or team of advisers, said it was too early to draw any firm conclusions on the results. His party would be holding a central committee meeting to discuss the election outcome.
The losses sustained by the DAB were reminiscent of that which it faced in 2003. Back then, only 62 out of 206 candidates won in the staunchly pro-Beijing party. That came after half a million people took to the streets to oppose the proposal to enact national security laws under Article 23 of the Basic Law.
The devastating election results prompted the resignation of Jasper Tsang Yok-sing. Any post mortem conducted by the party is likely to lead to a shake-up of its key leadership.
Federation of Trade Unions’ legislators Alice Mak Mei-kuen and Ho Kai-ming were among other veterans booted out. Mak, who gained recent notoriety for uttering an expletive at Lam during a closed-door meeting over the decision to withdraw the extradition bill, blamed her loss on the administration.
“The administration’s governance has given rise to so many public grievances. In the election campaign, pro-government candidates have been unfairly treated. This is a very important reason,” Mak said
She said she had been serving her constituents diligently for more than a quarter of a century but in a divided society, “it’s not about our work, it’s about our political stance.”
Among the young winners, at least five activists from the Occupy movement of 2014, which opposed Beijing’s electoral reforms, won seats, nudging out veterans.
Occupy student activist Lester Shum, who ousted Chow Ping-tim in Hoi Bun district, was emotional in victory. “The government must respond to our five demands as soon as possible,” he said. “We can be happy for tonight and take a rest tomorrow, but we will need to keep up our fight the day after for the future of Hong Kong.”
The five demands have been the clarion call of protesters during the past six months of demonstrations, sparked by the now-withdrawn extradition bill, which had since morphed into a full-blown anti-government movement that has resulted in increasingly violent clashes with police.
The five demands are for the withdrawal of the bill, an agreement not to call the clashes of June 12 a riot, amnesty for those arrested on that day, a commission inquiry into allegations of excessive use of force by the police and a push for genuine universal suffrage.
All five Occupy activists were prime movers of the peaceful protests over the past months. Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, the organiser of the mass marches of the movement, was also among those elected. Sham, who was still wearing crutches and recovering from an attack by hammer-wielding thugs, called on Lam to listen to the people’s voice and address the five demands.
“I hoped the pro-democracy bloc could win more than half of the seats in district council elections,” Sham said. He hoped the pan-democrats would try their best to carry out their duties to prove that “supporters of democracy are more outstanding than those who support the establishment.”
Another key winner was Kelvin Lam, 40, who replaced Occupy co-founder Joshua Wong Chi-fung on the ticket after the latter was banned from running because of his stance on self-determination. Lam beat incumbent Judy Chan of the New People’s Party by 4,100 votes to 3,100 in the South Horizons West constituency.
“The high turnout rate did benefit the pro-democracy camp,” Kelvin Lam said. “The result is like a referendum of the current administration, like a confidence vote.”
The landslide success by the pan-democrats also tilted the power balance at several of the 18 district councils, which had long been dominated by pro-government politicians. In Wan Chai district council, which had one pro-democracy councillor before the Sunday polls, pan-democrats secured more than half of 13 seats and gained the majority. A similar outcome was on the cards for Wong Tai Sin district council.
With pan-democrats set to ride the new momentum, their challenge will be to harness their new-found power at the district council level. If before, the government could rely on the pro-establishment controlled district councils to rubber-stamp its measures on municipal affairs, it is all but certain that there will now be gridlock with both sides set to clash on decision-making.
One key challenge for the democrats will be to force concessions out of Lam and her government, especially on resolving the current political impasse over the protesters’ demands. Lam had insisted she would not address any of their demands unless the city returned to calm and order, after increasingly radical acts by demonstrators who have attacked metro stations and shops linked to the mainland and disrupted traffic and barricaded roads
.
More than 5,000 people have been arrested since the protests began in early June and radicals have become increasingly more violent in their clashes with police. On Sunday, anything but black appeared to be the new black, as protesters studiously avoided wearing the color, as agreed on their telegram channels.
As the results rolled into the early hours of Monday, on LIHKG, the Reddit-like virtual command center of protesters, there was much celebration but also reflection on the next steps forward. The victory was but a small milestone, said some, with more yet to be achieved in their pursuit of democracy.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
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Weeks-long protests in Hong Kong over a controversial extradition bill escalated on Sunday. Protesters tried to block major tunnels as well as taking aim at public transport networks and crucial industries.
