Narrow lead for pro-Beijing parties in Hong Kong

A FAILURE by Hong Kong’s democratic parties to present a unified front has given pro-Beijing leader Leung Chun-ying a narrow lead in legislative elections. However, pro-democracy groups kept their veto power over any constitutional changes proposed in the former crown colony.

Deep divisions across the pro-democracy ticket, with some competing against each other in important districts, and the lack of a broad, co-ordinated strategy, allowed better mobilised pro-Beijing, pro-establishment parties to hold their ground.

The two sides finished evenly split in Sunday’s elections for the 40 seats on the Hong Kong legislative council that Hong Kong voters choose, but the pro-Beijing side gets a larger advantage because another 30 seats on the council are chosen by business and special interest groups.

The result meant that the democratic groups could not capitalise on weeks of protest against a controversial plan to introduce a new compulsory school curriculum, which critics said was a flagrant attempt to brainwash the public with Chinese Communist Party principles.

The election drew a strong turnout, with 53 per cent of the territory’s 3.5 million registered voters casting ballots, 8 percentage points higher than in the last election in 2008.

“The higher voter turnout reflects the people’s frustrations with the CY Leung administration,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong. It also showed public unease over the government’s aborted plan to introduce Chinese patriotism classes that many feared would be a form of brainwashing, he added.

Albert Ho, chairman of the main Democratic Party, apologised for what he called a “bad result” and resigned, despite being re-elected.

“Our party will certainly learn from this failure,” he said. “We’ll have a deep reflection and then work out our plan for reform in the future.”

Leung Chun-ying, also known as CY Leung, a former government adviser and a self-made Hong Kong-born surveyor, became Hong Kong’s leader, or chief executive, in July after being picked by an elite pro-Beijing committee. His campaign was marred by scandal and public unhappiness at a lack of representation.

He is the last chief executive to be chosen by a 1,193 member-committee comprising billionaires, politicians and representatives from industry groups.

Pro-democracy parties won more than a third of the 70 seats, more than the minimum 24 needed to give them a veto on constitutional issues, the most contentious of which is the eventual introduction of full democracy.

Under the terms of the Basic Law, the mini-constitution introduced in Hong Kong as part of the terms of the return of the territory to China in 1997, Beijing has pledged that Hong Kong can elect its own leader in 2017 and all legislators by 2020 at the earliest.