The record low turnout rate of Sunday’s Hong Kong legislative election is a “telling blow” to surviving democracy in the city, an expert told VOA Wednesday, as others contacted also criticized the poll.
The voting rate in the “patriots-only” election of the former British colony’s Legislative Council was only 30.2%, a new low since the 1997 handover back to China and in substantial contrast to nearly 60% in the previous election in 2016 and the record high of 71% in the 2019 district council election.
Among the 90 newly elected lawmakers, only one from the functional constituencies – those representing such segments of society as tourism or finance – is independent and not explicitly pro-establishment.
The turnout rate and outcome showed that legislative elections are no longer democratic, according to Jacques deLisle, professor of political science at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania.
“The election was not meaningfully democratic, and the outcome was universally known in advance. Pro-democracy candidates had been systematically excluded under reforms adopted during the last year,” deLisle told VOA by email.
This was the first general election since implementation of the draconian national security law in June of last year, and the election overhaul in March of this year that slashed the directly elected members from 35 seats to only 20 and put 40 seats into the hands of 1,500 members of an Election Committee consisting mostly of pro-Beijing members.
DeLisle called the overhaul “thorough and multi-faceted” moves to muzzle out the pro-democracy voices.
“Single-member districts were replaced by two-member districts -- a move that favored pro-Beijing candidates who often finished second to pro-democracy candidates in single-member constituencies,” he said.
“The number of seats chosen by the Election Committee -- a reliably pro-Beijing body -- grew from 0 to 40. The number of so-called functional constituency seats ... primarily representing various economic and social groups, dropped from 35 to 20 and eliminated some of the reliably pro-democracy constituencies,” he wrote.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the low turnout rate does not mean the election isn’t important.
“The government did not set a target turnout rate for any election, and voters have the free will to cast their votes. I believe that voters have a lot to consider, including the atmosphere, quality of the candidates, social situation and the weather,” Lam said in a press conference after the election.
In an interview in early December with China’s state-backed Global Times, Lam said a low turnout rate can also be interpreted to mean people are looking to maintain the same legislative makeup.
“There is a saying that when the government is doing well and its credibility is high, the voter turnout will decrease because the people do not have a strong demand to choose different lawmakers to supervise the government. Therefore, I think the turnout rate does not mean anything,” Lam said.
The low turnout rate came amid high-profile opposition figures calling for either boycotting the election or casting blank votes, which has become illegal under the new election rules.
A day before the election, officials issued warrants for the arrest of these politicians, including exiled former lawmaker Ted Hui, leading pro-democracy figure Nathan Law, and three others.
A Hong Kong-registered voter who requested anonymity for fear of political repercussions, said she did not vote in the 2021 election as a sign of opposition.
“In the past, there were at least two sides in the previous elections – pro-democracy and pro-establishment. I don’t want to cast a ballot and risk this being misunderstood as a recognition of this rigged election. I don’t want the government to have the excuse to claim this election was fair,” the education worker in her 20s told VOA.
Sunny Cheung, a student activist among for whom an arrest warrant has been issued, called the election turnout an expression of “silent opposition” by Hong Kongers.
“Boycotting the election by not voting, is not an act of ‘lying flat’, but it is people’s conscious and collective effort to prove that Hong Kongers do not surrender to a non-democratic election or support a rubber stamp legislature,” Cheung wrote on Facebook.
In the geographic constituencies – in which most registered voters can cast their ballots – each of the 10 districts featured three to five candidates, with at least one claiming that they had been independent and proclaiming themselves pro-democracy. However, not a single such candidate won the election.
“The candidates for the directly elected seats were subject to a new vetting procedure that systematically screened out almost all pro-democracy candidates. The national security department was part of the vetting process,” deLisle said.
A total of 47 pro-democracy activists, many of whom were lawmakers, were arrested and charged with subversion under the national security law after many held an unofficial primary election in July last year to choose the candidates to run for the general election, which was postponed for a year with government citing health concerns.
Elections have likely been changed from now on, and there is no return, deLisle said.
“Beijing has shown through the election law reforms and other measures its determination to exercise heightened and tightened control over Hong Kong and not to tolerate the pro-democracy movements. … We are not likely to see elections in Hong Kong in the foreseeable future to be meaningfully democratic,” he said.
