26 March 2017•Update: 27 March 2017
By Tevfik Durul and Fuat Kabakci
HONG KONG
Carrie Lam, former deputy of incumbent Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, won the restricted election to become the next chief executive of Hong Kong on Sunday.
Lam won 777 votes to defeat John Tsang, her main opponent and former financial secretary who gained 365 votes from 1,194 members of an Election Committee of lawmakers and societal representatives.
The third candidate, Woo Kwok-hing, a retired judge who promised to increase Hong Kongers’ involvement in the political process, received 21 votes. There were 31 abstentions.
Tsang who focused on reform in his campaign was the most popular candidate among ordinary Hong Kong residents.
Lam, viewed at Beijing’s preferred candidate, will be the first female leader in the city's history to be sworn in as the next chief executive on July 1, 2017.
Lam is expected to continue Leung’s pro-Beijing policies, which led to mass protests including the Umbrella Revolution of 2014.
In August 2014, Chinese leaders ruled that while Hong Kongers could choose their next chief executive in the 2017 elections, the candidates would have to be approved by Beijing first. Protesters had been calling for a fully democratic election with open nominations for the territory's next chief executive in 2017.
The protesters were attacked by the police with pepper spray. Since then the movement had been dubbed the "umbrella revolution" because protesters had en masse used umbrellas to shield themselves from the pepper spray. The non-violent movement is seen as the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in the territory since Beijing resumed sovereignty.
Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” formula, which promised a high degree of autonomy from Beijing, including universal suffrage.
