Hong Kong’s new district councils will be more ‘constructive’, members to be monitored for performance, city leader John Lee says
- Chief Executive John Lee urges residents to focus on election outcome and defends voting rate as a ‘good turnout’, despite hitting record low
- Government in afternoon to announce names of 179 district councillors appointed by city leader, and 27 for ex officio seats, joining 88 directly elected in poll
Hong Kong’s new district councils will be more “constructive”, with a monitoring mechanism to gauge members’ performance, the city’s leader has said, while urging residents to focus on the recent poll’s outcome and defending its record low voting rate as a “good turnout”.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Tuesday morning also revealed that the government in the afternoon would announce the names of the 179 district councillors he had appointed, and those taking up the 27 ex officio seats.
“We had about 1.2 million voters coming out to vote,” Lee told reporters before a meeting with top advisers from the Executive Council. “I think that was a good turnout.
“We have already passed the election process, it is important we focus our attention on the outcome of the election, and the outcome will mean a constructive district council rather than what used to be a destructive one.”
Hong Kong district council election: can the ‘patriotic’ winners deliver?
Under the district council revamp, only 88 out of 470 seats are directly elected by the public. The city leader chooses 179 others, local committees decide another 176 and rural leaders will hold the remaining 27 seats.
The city leader said the revamped municipal-level bodies would focus on livelihood issues and district matters, and members would be “readily available” to help residents when they had problems.
He added that the performance of new councillors would be monitored, unlike their counterparts elected in 2019, who Lee said had pursued their own political interests, sabotaged the governance system and gone against local and central authorities.
But he stopped short of saying when further details would be announced for the monitoring system, under which district councillors would be punished if they were considered to have performed poorly.
The Sunday poll saw 1,193,193 people – or 27.54 per cent of registered electors – vote in the first district council election since the municipal-level bodies were overhauled to align them with Beijing’s principle that only “patriots” should be in charge.
The turnout rate is a significant drop from the 71.23 per cent recorded in the last district council election, which was held at the height of the anti-government protests in 2019 and lead to the opposition bloc scoring a landslide victory.
It is also the lowest rate since the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997, with the 1999 poll previously faring the worst due to a turnout of 35.8 per cent.
The low participation rate followed a massive government promotional blitz to mobilise residents to vote, with authorities rolling out banners, television advertisements, social media clips and a “District Council Election Fun Day” held one day before Hongkongers headed to the ballot boxes.
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Polls open in Hong Kong’s new ‘patriots-only’ district council election
Lee said the government had done what it needed to do to promote the new district council election system, adding that authorities had to tell residents about the changes between the new and old formats.
He said he wanted Hongkongers to know the difference between representatives who would take care of the people’s interests versus those focusing on their own political goals.
The new system had also brought in members from increasingly varied backgrounds who would be more dedicated to serving residents, the city leader added.
“This is important because we have now turned over a new leaf, so this is going to be what will be good for Hong Kong, and that message has to be loud and clear and received by the people of Hong Kong,” he said.
Hong Kong’s main parties big winners in ‘patriots-only’ district council poll
According to the city’s leader, the 179 appointed district councillors came from different sectors and also included representatives from ethnic minority groups. Their median age is 47, with the youngest being 23 years old.
The election has drawn criticism from some Western countries, prompting Beijing’s foreign affairs arm in Hong Kong to hit back on Tuesday morning.
A spokesman for the commissioner’s office of China’s foreign ministry in Hong Kong said the days when external forces recklessly intervened in city affairs by supporting political proxies were gone and would never return.
Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ district poll is ‘real, functioning democracy’
The office said the councils were non-political district organisations, telling foreign politicians to immediately cease actions that disrupted the city and country, or they would risk a response from the Chinese side.
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on Monday slammed the poll and said many voices had been excluded from taking part.
Nabila Massrali, the European Union’s spokeswoman for foreign affairs, said the drastically reduced number of directly elected seats had severely weakened Hongkongers’ ability to choose their representatives.
