Hong Kong’s opposition pan-democrats apologise to supporters after Legco by-election defeat
City politics watchers say defeat at the polls may show that some have grown tired of the pan-democrats’ tactics
Hong Kong’s opposition politicians are picking up the pieces after suffering a crushing setback in Sunday’s Legislative Council by-election, which saw them lose two out of four seats that were theirs to retain and left them with a diminished vote share that reflected a widening rift with their traditional support base.
The loss marked the first time that pan-democrats squandered a by-election in the city’s polling history since its 1997 handover to Chinese sovereignty, and prompted them to make a public apology in front of the media’s cameras on Monday.
It was a far cry from the comeback they had expected to make, riding on what they had touted as a wave of public anger over the disqualification of elected lawmakers from their camp and Beijing’s tighter control over the city’s affairs.
“For the whole pan-democratic camp, it is a political defeat,” Chinese University political commentator Professor Ma Ngok said. “It is not that they won back two of the four seats, it is that they lost two seats previously held by them.
The biggest loser was localist Edward Yiu Chung-yim, one of the opposition camp’s star candidates, who secured about 48.8 per cent of votes but lost in the Kowloon West constituency to pro-establishment rival Vincent Cheng Wing-shun of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB).
