Among the four to win are Nathan Law, the 23-year-old leader of the “Umbrella movement” rallies who reportedly polled enough votes to come in second behind a pro-Beijing candidate, thus guaranteeing himself a seat in the council. A new wave of anti-C.
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Yau Wai-ching is also with Youngspiration – the 25-year-old emerged as a shock victor, edging out a veteran pro-democracy lawmaker.
In June 2015, the legislature rejected election rules drafted by Beijing that would have limited candidates for the 2017 election of Hong Kong’s high office to two or three Beijing loyalists.
Results in Hong Kong Legislative Council elections are very delayed, a sign of the high turnout – possibly a record-breaking show of interest from local people.
A lack of reliable polling and a complicated system in which lists of candidates vie for multiple seats in each district makes predicting the outcome hard. Full final results are still to be announced.
“I think Hong Kongers really wanted change”, Law said, celebrating his win.
Echoing Choy, Tian Feilong, assistant professor at Beijing-based Beihang University, told the Global Times on Sunday that a group of young people born in the year of the handover and called the “97 generation” have now reached the legal voting age of 18.
The momentum behind new young activists could draw support away from more established pro-democracy parties, splitting the vote.
Convicted for his role in civil disobedience during the so-called “umbrella” protests in 2014, the soft-spoken activist has said the former British colony must be allowed a referendum on its future. Those seats always go predominantly to pro-Beijing candidates.
Young Hong Kong independence activists calling for a complete break from China stood for the first time Sunday in city-wide legislative elections, the biggest polls since mass pro-democracy protests in 2014.
Victory for the small number of radical young campaigners might signal a shifting of the sands in the anti-establishment camp, but could also play into the hands of Beijing by splitting the democratic vote and letting pro-China politicians take more seats.
Hong Kong’s opposition now controls 27 of the legislature’s 70 seats, giving it a one-third veto bloc to oppose funding and various legislative bills including those it sees as eroding freedoms.
More than 2.2 million people voted, according to the Electoral Affairs Commission, with a turnout of 58 per cent – up from 53 per cent in 2012.
Around 3.8 million voters have an opportunity to select among 214 candidates – many identified as Beijing-friendly, pan-democrat or members of newer “localist” movements associated with the Occupy protests – running for 35 seats tied to geographical constituencies.
The DAB has nearly no volunteers to help in the election, while other pro-establishment groups such as the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions have so many volunteers that they do not even know how to use them, Choy said. He too wants to focus on promoting a self-determination movement.
Hong Kong has a legal and governance system separate from that of mainland China, as part of a treaty that ceded the territory from Britain in 1997.
“The democracy in the election is reflected by the free choice of voters, they do not need to be told who to vote”, he said, when asked his thoughts on how last-minute decisions by seven mostly pro-democracy candidates to suspend their campaigns in a bid to consolidate votes for those with more support would affect results.
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The entry of more-radical parties like the one headed by Law helped swell the number of candidates in this year’s election to a record, even as some anxious about a split in the loosely aligned “pan-democratic” camp.
