Beijing’s preferred candidate Carrie Lam was voted in as the next chief executive of Hong Kong on Sunday by a 1,200-strong election committee packed with supporters of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, as pro-democracy demonstrators turned out once more with yellow umbrellas, and a banner calling for fully democratic elections hung from the city’s iconic Lion Rock.
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There were three candidates in the running for choice by a 1,194-person “election committee” composed of pro-Beijing businesspeople, professionals and politicians that selects leaders for the former crown colony and the former chief secretary’s victory had been widely expected.
China’s favored candidate was picked Sunday to be Hong Kong’s new leader, in the first such vote since since large-scale pro-democracy protests dominated the city in 2014.
Hong Kong is semi-autonomous and has been governed under a “one country, two systems” deal since it was handed back to China by Britain in 1997.
Pro-democracy protesters held a rally demanding universal suffrage outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre where the election was held yesterday.
Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan, vice-chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, which is the largest political party in the Legislative Council, said the party would seek more cooperation with the new chief executive. “Hong Kong is changing”.
CARRIE Lam was elected as the next chief executive of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region yesterday, vowing to lead Hong Kong forward in solidarity.
Within minutes of the result, the Asian financial hub’s freewheeling social media scene alighted with lewd jokes and memes at Lam’s expense.
For advocates of greater democracy in Hong Kong, Lam’s election was a predictable. “Opinion polls showed that John Tsang was more popular with the people. but under our system, so long as the message is clear from Beijing, then the pro-establishment camp will (follow it)”.
Hundreds of Lam’s supporters waved Chinese flags and cheered inside and outside the venue after her win. But Hong Kong is facing a lot of problems.
BBC television coverage of the Hong Kong election had been censored in hotels in mainland China.
That year, Beijing agreed to allow residents to vote for the next leader. The others are former student protest leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung, as well as the founders of the Occupy Central movement, Benny Tai, Reverend Chu Yiu-ming and Chan Kin-man.
“I am anxious about the discontent that has emerged in our society”, she said in January.
Hong Kong’s first female government leader-elect Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor pledged to unite a divided city after winning the election on Sunday.
Rather than benefit from her close ties with the incumbent, Leung Chun-ying, Lam has had to struggle against the unwelcome moniker of “CY 2.0” and even central government support, seen as counterproductive. Those fears have been amplified by several cases in recent years, including the secret detention on the mainland of five Hong Kong booksellers and a Chinese tycoon’s suspected abduction in Hong Kong by mainland security agents.
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After more than two years of protests over the city’s political future, this seemed to be what her city needed to hear, and saying the right thing at the right time was precisely what catapulted Lam to this position in the first place.
