Hong Kong Delays Legislative Election for One Year on Virus
Hong Kong Delays Upcoming Legislative Election on Virus
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong delayed a key Legislative Council election scheduled for September for one year due to a recent surge in Covid-19 cases, fueling more outrage among the city’s opposition.
“Delaying the Legislative Council election held every four years is a very difficult decision,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said at a Friday night press conference. “But in order to curb the pandemic, ensure public safety and citizens’ health, and meanwhile ensure the election is held under an open and fair environment, this decision is necessary.”
The Asian financial hub saw 121 coronavirus infections on Friday after recording its highest tally yet on Thursday. The city is grappling with a new wave of cases that has seen tighter restrictions -- including a two-person limit on public gatherings -- that could further impact traditional campaigning.
Lam said she was invoking an emergency powers ordinance to delay the vote and that the government’s decision to do so had the support of China’s central government. She said deploying as many as 34,000 election day volunteers across more than 600 polling stations to assist millions of voters was too dangerous under the circumstances. “It poses a great risk of infection,” she said.
The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, which reports to China’s State Council, said in a statement that the decision to delay the election “reflects a highly responsible attitude towards the life and health of Hong Kong citizens. It is very necessary, reasonable and legal, and the central government fully understands and agrees.”
‘An Excuse’
The postponement of the vote until Sept. 5, 2021, caps off a week that saw Hong Kong’s government draw new red lines on how much dissent it would tolerate -- and stands to intensify concerns about the preservation of basic freedoms in the financial hub. It could anger President Donald Trump, who has started to roll back the city’s so-called special trading status amid wider tensions between the U.S. and China.
“We condemn the Hong Kong government’s decision,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Friday. “This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s prosperity and this is only the most recent in a growing list of broken promises by Beijing.”
Pro-democracy advocates had hoped to ride the momentum of a landslide victory in last November’s District Council vote to an unprecedented majority in the legislature. They are already reeling from the government’s imposition of a Beijing-imposed national security law last month, which has been widely criticized and let to punitive measures by the Trump administration.
Late Friday, HK01 reported that six activists who moved overseas are now wanted by Hong Kong’s police on suspicion of violating the national security law. They included pro-democracy movement leader Nathan Law, who fled to the U.K., along with former British consulate staffer Simon Cheng and activist Ray Wong, who was granted asylum by Germany, HK01 said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Hong Kong’s government earlier this week banned at least 12 opposition candidates and arrested four young activists under the sweeping security law for comments made online. That led to international condemnation from the U.S., Australia, U.K., while local democracy activists and human rights groups said that Hong Kong’s government was suppressing free speech among opposition groups.
Opposition lawmaker Fernando Cheung said the delay and the candidates’ disqualification amounted to “nothing less than election fraud.”
“The pandemic was used purely as an excuse. The real reason for the delay is that the CCP is afraid it will lose by a landslide, much like what happened in the district elections in November last year,” he said, referring to China’s ruling Communist Party. “This is blatant repression and the decision itself is unconstitutional.”
About 55% of people answering a recent survey believed the Legislative Council election should go ahead as planned on Sept. 6 despite the pandemic, according to the Hong Kong Public Opinion Program, which polled 8,805 respondents between July 27 and 30. Some 21% thought the election should be postponed by no more than six months.
The delay’s biggest impact will be to increase suspicion about the credibility of the elections, said Ivan Choy, a senior lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“We know that hygiene is one of the important considerations,” Choy said. But “people will have suspicions, especially because we have the landslide victory of the democrats in the last District Council elections.”
The restrictions on Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and opposition politicians have increased dramatically since Beijing drafted and imposed the national security law, bypassing the city’s legislature. The new legislation bars subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with punishments as harsh as life in prison.
Lam’s administration and the central government in Beijing have both defended the law as a way to restore stability and prosperity to Hong Kong after sometimes violent protests last year helped push the city into a recession -- only to be battered again by the pandemic. But lawyers and activists have said the law’s vaguely-worded clauses could be used to silence dissidents and political opponents.
‘Not Convincing’
In delaying the vote, “Lam spent a long time talking about the difficulties, without trying to demonstrate she has done all things possible to prevent infections -- this is not convincing,” said Alvin Yeung, one of the pro-democracy lawmakers who was barred.
Yeung said Hong Kong’s leader was afraid the opposition would win a majority. “Any reasonable person could hardly believe the prevention of pandemic is the only excuse the Chief Executive has in mind,” he said.
In a statement justifying the disqualification of the opposition figures this week, Hong Kong’s government said lobbying foreign governments and even “expressing an objection in principle to the enactment of the National Security Law” were both grounds for barring politicians from holding office.
Prominent activist Joshua Wong, one of the barred candidates, said in a statement Friday that the Beijing-drafted law imposed on Hong Kong was “a legal weapon used against dissidents.”
“The national security law is how Beijing criminalized freedom of speech, but no matter what, we won’t bow down and we choose not to surrender to China,” he said at a separate press conference. “My political career doesn’t depend on the election. It depends on the Hong Kong people.”
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