Pan-democrats Lose Two Of Four Legco Seats In Poll

Hong Kong voters delivered a stunning rebuke to Legco’s pan-democrats, choosing two pro-establishment candidates to replace pro-democracy councillors who were ousted for failing to take their oaths properly. Of the four Legco seats up for grabs in Sunday's by-elections, the pan-democrats only managed to regain two.

The result means the pro-establishment camp retains their control over both the geographical and functional constituency arms of the council, preventing the pan-democrats from regaining their veto power over lawmakers’ motions and amendments.

The so-called ‘oathgate’ was at the centre of the pan-democrats’ campaigns – with candidates appealing on voters to rectify what they saw to be the unjust disqualifications.

Most observers had expected the pan-democrats to hang on to at least three out of the four seats.

Paul Zimmerman’s loss to pro-establishment rival Tony Tse in the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape Functional Constituency was not a big surprise, but Edward Yiu – one of the lawmakers disqualified over oathgate – was expected to win in the Kowloon West geographical constituency.

He ended up losing to DAB candidate Vincent Cheng – who has an established history of community work in Kowloon West. His winning margin was barely over one percent of the vote. The result was confirmed after Yiu demanded a recount.

Clearly, the pan-democrats’ focus on the ‘unjust’ disqualifications was not enough to win back all the seats they were stripped of. The fact that the turnout for Sunday’s vote was also significantly lower than in 2016 also didn’t help – historically, the higher the turnout, the better the pan-democrats perform.

Political analyst Ma Ngok from Chinese University’s Department of Government and Public Administration, said “It seems that the democrats have been trying to use the disqualification issue to try to mobilise voters, but… with the benefit of hindsight, it is not very successful this time.”

Ma added that a closer look at the results from individual polling stations suggests that Yiu failed to attract support from grassroots voters who live in public housing estates, and the pan-democrats may have over-estimated his popularity and name-recognition.

“It seems that it is difficult for the democrats… now with the camp being so factionalised, to find a single candidate in a single constituency which can capture the support of all the different factions”, Ma said.

He said the pro-democracy camp may have wrongly thought that their supporters who had previously voted for ADPL or Democratic Party candidates would automatically switch their support to Yiu.

“You just cannot assume that just because they have the endorsement of a certain political group then they will automatically transfer their support to that candidate”, he said.

Elsewhere, Au Nok-hin – the pro-democracy candidate who won in Hong Kong Island by 10,000 votes over New People’s Party rival Judy Chan – acknowledged that despite his win, the pan-democrats’ share of the vote actually dwindled from past elections, and urged his camp to carefully consider why.

“There may be a limitation for democrats in seeking for support for different classes or different sectors in society", Au said.

Chan was cheered by the gains the pro-establishment camp made, saying “the difference is a lot [narrower] than 2016, so next time I think we will work harder and have more votes.”

In New Territories East, Gary Fan of the Neo-democrats defeated the Federation of Trade Union’s Bill Tang by more than 30,000 votes to reclaim the seat he lost in 2016.

Fan said his camp had wanted “to make our voice loud and clear… to send a message to the government. We try to say no to the government’s act of [disqualifying] our popularly-elected legislative councillor.”

Professor Ma said despite Fan and Au’s victories, the pro-democracy camp actually lost support from the 2016 elections.

“These are both cases of concern for the democrats because it seems that the vote share of the camp have been dropping in recent elections, and then the gap between them and the pro-establishment camp have been narrowing and narrowing”, he noted.

“I think the overall political message is more damaging in a sense that even if the government went ahead to disqualify pro-democracy legislators, then it seems that a lot of voters think this is ok”, Ma concluded. “So I think this is make it more difficult for democrats to continue on their struggle in the future.”

Federation of Trade Unions vice-president Wong Kwok-kin told reporters at the election centre in Wan Chai that the results – particularly Vincent Cheng's win in Kowloon West – showed that voters agreed with the decision to strip the six lawmakers of their seats.

DAB leader Starry Lee agreed that Cheng's win was a 'breakthrough' for her party.

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