Hong Kong activists defended yesterday a low turnout in a special election that returned five opposition legislators who had resigned, saying they had still mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters who want Beijing to implement full democracy.
Beijing loyalists called the engineered election on Sunday a failure, saying the weak numbers at the polls show support for gradual change in the former British colony with an unelected leader and a half-elected legislature.
Hong Kong voted to fill five vacancies in the Legislative Council — one in each of the territory’s five major electoral districts. The five legislators resigned in January, hoping to set up a face-off against pro-Beijing candidates in a de facto referendum on democracy. However, pro-China political parties boycotted the contest and the attention shifted to the turnout.
Running for their old seats, the five were re-elected by big margins against little known candidates with nearly 465,000 of the 579,000 votes cast. However, the overall turnout was low, with just 17 percent of Hong Kong’s 3.4 million registered voters going to the polls — well short of the activists’ goal of 25 percent.
The five re-elected legislators say they received a mandate to push Beijing for quick democratic reforms.
“This is a mass movement. As long as a mass movement can mobilize the people, it is a success,” said Alan Leong (梁家傑), one of the winners.
Pro-China politicians said the results showed that many Hong Kong residents disagreed with the pro-democracy activists.
“Among the majority of voters who didn’t take part in this election, many think this by-election is unnecessary, an abuse of procedure — even a waste of taxpayer dollars. We need to respect their views too,” said Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權), who was chosen for his post by an 800-member committee stacked with Beijing loyalists.
Tsang urged opposition legislators to back limited electoral reforms recently proposed by the government, which expand the leader selection committee to 1,200 people and the legislature from 60 to 70 members — but keep the chamber half elected.
The pro-democracy camp, which controls enough seats to block the package, says the proposals are too conservative.
Ming Sing (成名), a Hong Kong politics expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, called the referendum campaign a modest success.
“Those that keep stressing the voter turnout is too low are deliberately ignoring the views of a sizable portion of the population. This by-election shows that there is support for the de-facto referendum on universal suffrage,” Sing said.
“The immediate political pressure that this puts on the government is not great,” he said.
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