Hong Kong Chief Executive Ka-chiu Lee applauded the "good turnout" in the city's Dec. 10 "patriots-only" District Council elections—despite a tunrout of only 27.5%, the lowest in any race since the return to Chinese rule in 1997. He also charged that protesters had attempted to "sabotage" the vote. These were the first district-level polls since Hong Kong's government overhauled the electoral system [6], introducing changes that effectively made it impossible for pro-democratic candidates to run. Several pro-democracy hopefuls failed to obtain the required nominations from government-appointed committees. Most of the city's leading democracy advocates are behind bars, in exile, or have dropped out of politics.
The number of publicly elected seats in the District Council race was also slashed from 90% to 20% of the 470-seat body. The remainder are voted on by government-appointed committees, with candidates selected by the chief executive. This means the Council now has fewer directly elected seats tan when it was established in the 1980s, under British rule. The scrapping of this system in favor of universal suffrage [9] had been a key demand of te 2019 protests in Hong Kong.
Three members of the League of Social Democrats [10] were arrested as they were on their way to protest the vote on the morning of the election. The paty's chair Chan Po-ying and vice-chairs Dickson Chow and Yu Wai-pan were detained by police in Central. Two days earlier, veteran activist Koo Sze-yiu was apprehended by national security police after informing reporters of plans to protest the overhauled elections. (HKFP [11], AP [12])
