Hong Kong - Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp swept district
council elections in a landslide victory on Monday in what is widely
seen as a referendum on months of anti-government protest.
Pro-democracy parties are set to control 388 of 452 available seats
and 17 out of 18 district councils, in some cases unseating all
pro-establishment candidates.
While the district councils are mostly concerned with community
affairs, they are represented in the group of 1,200 electors who will
select the next chief executive in 2022.
Hong Kong Leader Carrie Lam said in a statement that the vote
appeared to "reflect people's dissatisfaction with the current
situation and the deep-seated problems in society."
Pro-democracy candidates did particularly well in some of the areas
hit hardest by anti-government protests over the past five months
even as the city has been pushed into a recession amidst dwindling
tourist figures.
Wong Tai Sin district, whose residents were famously tear gassed for
heckling riot police, is now completely controlled by the
pro-democracy camp.
Democrats also did well in Yuen Long, Tai Po and Sha Tin districts,
the sites of some of the most intense and violent confrontations
between protesters and police.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Tokyo that "any
attempts to undermine the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong will
end in failure" after a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, according to Kyodo News.
During the meeting Abe emphasized the "importance of a free and open
Hong Kong prospering under the 'one country, two systems' principle,"
according to Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga.
High-profile activist Joshua Wong, who was barred from running in the
elections, called the results "historic" on Twitter.
Almost 3 million people voted. The opposition is winning 388 seats vs. 59 for the gov't (w/ a few more counting). Every way you look at it, this is historic. As our city plummets from being semi-autonomous to semi-authoritarian, we react by showing what’s DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) November 25, 2019
"Every way you look at it, this is historic. As our city plummets
from being semi-autonomous to semi-authoritarian, we react by showing
what's DEMOCRACY IN ACTION," he wrote.
Prominent Democratic and Republican US politicians, including
senators Marco Rubio and Elizabeth Warren, also hailed the results.
Much of the pro-democracy camp's success is partly due to a
successful voter drive conducted during protests that saw more than 1
million people added to the voter list.
Election officials said more than 2.9 million of 4.1 million eligible
voters cast a ballot in the elections in a 71 per cent voter turnout,
a record for the district council elections.
The former British colony has been hit by weekly protests since early
June, when the government attempted to amend its extradition laws
concerning mainland China.
The proposed law instead prompted hundreds of thousands of people to
take to the streets for the past five months as the government failed
to defuse tensions.
Earlier this month, universities across Hong Kong were forced to
cancel the end of their semester after thousands of students and
protesters occupied campuses.
Protests began in Hong Kong over legislation that would have allowed
residents to be extradited to mainland China, but they have since
come to represent a mass movement against the local and Beijing
governments and police violence.
Many protesters expressed concern that the draft extradition bill was
a sign that Hong Kong was losing to China the autonomy which the
former British colony was promised for 50 years when it returned to
Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China under the "one
country, two systems" arrangement until 2047.