The first District Council elections under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) altered electoral system, dubbed “Patriots Governing Hong Kong,’ took place on Dec. 10, 2023. The election effectively excluded all pro-democracy candidates.
The Registration and Electoral Office announced on Dec. 11 that more than 1.19 million people voted in the geographical constituencies, with a total turnout rate of 27.54 percent, a historic low. The Epoch Times reporters interviewed a lot of the citizens in the streets, and most of them said they would not vote.
On Dec. 10, reporters observed outside several polling stations from Tsuen Wan, North District, and Tin Hau to Wan Chai. Most of the voters were elderly and middle-aged people. They were all able to enter the polling stations without queuing up, a complete reversal of the scenes of long queues seen in 2019.
The Epoch Times reporter interviewed several citizens on the streets of Mong Kok yesterday afternoon. Most of them said they would not vote. Even if they planned to vote, they said they did not know the platforms of any of the candidates and might not vote if there was no candidate they favored.
Mr. X, a resident of the outlying islands, who works in the publication industry, said that he was told by a friend who is a civil servant that he was under pressure from his supervisor they must vote, and he feels this is strange. Because his friend thinks to vote or not to vote is up to one to decide and is worried about the ways the authority is going to monitor whether they have voted or not. “I would feel so miserable if I were him,” said Mr. X.
Mr. X said that in the past, he only supported and voted for the hard-working councilors, but he is not aware of their existence this time round. He stressed “I don’t know these people (the candidates). The ones I would vote for are absent this time.
I suppose they (the candidates) will not do what I demand of them, such as “monitoring the public purse, building a road, or building a bridge with hundreds of millions of HK dollars.” He believes that the current candidates will not do these things (supervise the government), so he has no intention to vote.
He further pointed out that there were numerous queries from the media and legislators in the past, but he has no such feelings from the current legislators. He also believes that it is “outrageous” to require nominations from pro-government members of the “Three Committees” to be admitted for candidature.
Mr. Chan, 30, who works in the home renovation industry, said that due to the government’s extensive publicity drive, he knew that today was voting day, but he did not know his specific constituency. He said that he did not plan to vote. “There is no point in voting, and there is no good choice.” He admitted that he had not paid attention to this matter since the pro-democracy candidates “disappeared.” He also believes that the government does not want the turnout to look “ugly” to “appease a certain group of people.”
Jason, a 29-year-old man who works in human resources management and is a voter in Kwai Tsing District, said he planned to vote later to “fulfill his civic responsibility.” He also called on his friends to vote, but no one took it seriously. However, he also said that he is still undecided on who to vote for. “I will see which one is better in a while. If I do not see a favored candidate, I may not vote, as there is then no more point in voting.” Although there are no pro-democratic candidates in this election, he said he “doesn’t care.” He said it all depends on the candidates. If they can do something meaningful for the district, he will vote.
Regarding the restructuring of the district councils, he said he has nothing to say now. “Whether they can achieve the results will be known in a few years.” He hoped that the new district councilors would do their best.
Nathan, a 32-year-old businessperson, is a resident of Mong Kok and voted in the last district elections. However, he said that he would not vote this time because, “there are no candidates that (he) really wants to vote for,” and he believed that there are no district councilors who “can get what we want.” He believes that the voting atmosphere this time is not as enthusiastic as in the past, the turnout will definitely not match the same level, and his friends will not pay much attention to the elections and vote.
Government Prevents Another Landslide Victory of the Pro-Democracy Camp
During the anti-extradition movement in 2019, after the pro-democracy camp won a resounding victory and captured up to 86 percent of the seats.The government did everything it could to hinder the work of the district councils at every turn, including not dispatching the civil affairs officers for meetings on multiple occasions on the grounds that it was not discussing regional affairs but instead was “involving politics.” There were also occasions when officials even led their team out of the meeting rooms.
From Feb. 28 to March 1, 2021, the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office held a symposium on “Patriots Governing Hong Kong,” during which Xia Baolong, the Director, said, “To implement the principle of ‘patriots governing Hong Kong’ advocated by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, we must design, based on the actual conditions in Hong Kong, a democratic electoral system with Hong Kong characteristics.”
On March 30 of the same year, the Fourth Session of the CCP’s 13th National People’s Congress passed a resolution that district council members would no longer be included in the Election Committee to reduce delays in the administration of the chief executive and the government by pan-democrats and Hong Kong localists.
On May 21, 2021, the “Public Offices (Candidacy and Taking Up Offices, Miscellaneous Amendments) Ordinance 2021” was gazetted and came into effect. The Ordinance requires district councilors to take an oath. It stipulates that violations of the oath or behavior incompatible with “upholding the Basic Law, allegiance to the Special Administrative Region” will disqualify them from being a district councilor.
Under the specter of the “Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL),” the Hong Kong government’s oath requirement, and the threat of salary reimbursement in the event of a disqualification (DQ), many pro-democracy district councilors resigned, leaving about 70 percent of the seats in Hong Kong’s district councils vacant. Since then, the government has adopted the so-called “patriots governing Hong Kong” doctrine to review local administration, aiming to prevent a repeat of the pro-democracy victory.
On May 2, 2023, the John Lee government announced the “reform” of the District Council, reducing directly elected seats from 452 to 88, representing a drastic decrease from 94 percent to less than 20 percent. It also added 179 appointed seats, with another 176 seats added as elected among appointed regional committee members, plus 27 ex-officio members. The chair of the district council will be served by the local affairs officer, who is a director-level civil servant in the district. All district council candidates must first pass the review of the district council’s qualification review committee.
In the end, traditional pro-democracy political parties, such as the Democratic Party and the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, failed to secure enough nominations from the “Three Committees,” leading to a complete defeat.
