HK District Polls: 'Umbrella Soldiers' take eight seats

ANKARA

A record 1.4 million Hong Kong residents went to the polls for district council elections at the weekend, the first polls since protests rocked the autonomous territory last year.

The South China Morning Post reported Tuesday that around 47 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, with the pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) claiming victory, taking 136 seats and 23 percent of the total vote.

The election saw 363 district councilors elected to serve four-year terms.

One surprise in the elections was the success of the "Umbrella Soldiers" -- the name given to those who took to the streets last year during Occupy protests -- who claimed a total of eight seats.

Kwong Po-yin, of newly formed group Youngspiration, defeated Kowloon City council chairman Lau Wai-wing, although the better-known Yau Wai-ching lost to an incumbent -- lawmaker Priscilla Leung Mei-fun -- by a margin of only 300 votes, the SCMP reported.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that promised a high degree of autonomy from Beijing, including universal suffrage.

The 2014 Occupy protests, which involved more than 100,000 people at their peak, were seen as one of the most serious challenges to China's authority since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which ended in a bloody crackdown in Beijing.

With a record turnout, plus the victories of the ‘Umbrella Soldiers’, City University political scientist James Sung Lap-kung told the Post he believed 2016 would be a very political year.

“With both camps mobilising their supporters to vote on Sunday... the district council poll shows that our society remains very divided politically, and there is also a by-election coming up [next spring],” Sung said.

Two established DAB lawmakers, Elizabeth Quat and Christopher Chung Shu-kun, lost their district council bids, but under more unexpected circumstances than their opposition counterparts.

Chung was defeated by a relatively unknown candidate, a so-called ‘Umbrella Soldier’ -- Chui Chi-kin -- who decided to run on the last day of the nomination period.

Chung attributed his defeat to first-time voters.

Quat, meanwhile, succumbed to Yip Wing of the Labour Party, which only stood 12 candidates in total.

Overall, the DAB lost 17 seats, leaving it with 119 councillors -- a figure high enough for it to retain its status as Hong Kong’s biggest political party.

But percentage-wise, no opposition group fared better than the Neo Democrats, a small party that wants to limit immigration from mainland China, which won 15 out of the 16 seats it stood in, scoring a 93.8 percent success rate.