China has declared primaries held by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy parties at the weekend “illegal” and the territory’s leader has announced an investigation, saying that the candidates’ intention to vote against government legislation could contravene national security legislation.
The primary polls, while not a formal part of Hong Kong’s election process, drew an estimated 610,000 people out to vote for pro-democracy candidates ahead of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) elections scheduled for September.
The extraordinary turnout in the face of warnings by authorities was interpreted by observers as an act of opposition to the national security legislation imposed by Beijing on June 30.
Photo: AFP
As the pro-democracy protest movement continued throughout last year and an unprecedented number of pro-democracy candidates were voted in at district council elections, there has been growing confidence that the pro-Beijing members in the LegCo could be sent into minority.
With the primaries, organizers sought to determine a shortlist of candidates to avoid splitting the votes.
Late on Monday, Beijing’s top representatives in Hong Kong labeled the primaries “illegal” and accused organizers of colluding with foreign powers in a “serious provocation” of Hong Kong’s electoral system and to seize the private data of voters.
“The goal of organizer Benny Tai (戴耀廷) and the opposition camp is to seize the ruling power of Hong Kong and ... carry out a Hong Kong version of ‘color revolution,’” said a spokesman for the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, whose chief is also in charge of implementing the national security legislation.
The statement came in support of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), who said that democrats coordinating to win a majority and veto the government’s budget could be against the anti-sedition laws, and would be investigated.
“If this so-called ‘primary’ election’s purpose is to achieve the ultimate goal of delivering what they call a ‘35+’ [majority seats] with the objective of objecting to, resisting every policy initiative of the Hong Kong [Special Administrative Region] government, then it may fall into the category of subverting the state power, which is now one of the four types of offenses under the new National Security Law,” Lam told media late on Monday.
Lam said that she was not saying the primaries did contravene the law, but warned that if an investigation proved as much “there is certainly a case to answer.”
Legal academic and an organizer of the primaries and the 2014 Occupy Central protests, Tai, said that LegCo’s power to veto the budget was enshrined in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
“How can a power that is recognized by the Basic Law be breaching the national security legislation?” he asked.
Preliminary results from the primary polls showed favorable results for candidates who were younger, pro-self determination or localist, and those who had high profiles during the protest movement, including Joshua Wong (黃之鋒).
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS