Pro-establishment camp emerge as winners in poll

The March 11 Legislative Council by-election to refill four of the six seats vacated by disqualified legislators-elect yielded surprising results. Prior to the poll almost all commentators predicted the opposition camp would win all three geographical constituency seats. After all, the pro-establishment camp had never won a one-to-one direct LegCo election before, as it used to secure just 40 percent of votes against the opposition camp’s 60 percent, they said. The vote ratio was more or less true in many past LegCo elections but the gap has narrowed down to about 45:55 in recent years.

As such, the victory of Vincent Cheng Wing-shun in Kowloon West was truly historic and remarkable. At the same time, the vote share gap in the Hong Kong Island geographical constituency narrowed further to 47:51 this time, which was unheard of before. In New Territories East the opposition camp managed to win but for the first time failed to garner more than half the votes. Assuming 60 percent of the votes won by independent candidate Christine Fong Kwok-shan were from pro-establishment supporters, which is highly possible since she used to be a Liberal Party member, the vote ratio between the rival camps would be 48:52. Compared with the 2016 general election, the pro-establishment camp has made outstanding progress. It is fair to say the pro-establishment camp was the real winner of this by-election and the opposition barely secured a pyrrhic victory.

Overall, the by-election results were a pleasant surprise to the pro-establishment camp. A few observations can help explain the results. First of all, as in all previous LegCo elections, the latest by-election was dominated by political issues and ideological contests, and was a reflection of the popularity of the local government. This time, the biggest topic was no doubt the disqualification of LegCo members. The co-location arrangement at the Kowloon West Station of the Express Rail Link, unauthorized building works found at Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah’s house and controversy over “Hong Kong independence” advocacy were all topics the opposition camp did their best to exploit. In other words, the overall political environment was not unfavorable to the opposition camp, except for the government now enjoying a higher approval rating. After the illegal “Occupy Central” movement failed in 2014, the opposition parties constantly blamed the small turnout in political rallies on their supporters’ sense of frustration. Now that they even failed to mobilize their supporters to vote for them, there was certainly more to the phenomenon than meets the eye.

In fact, many opposition supporters were infuriated when some LegCo members insulted our country, since we are all Chinese despite everything. The other small tricks pulled off during the oath-taking ceremony were either inconsequential or meaningless. And anyone with common sense would not believe the co-location arrangement would endanger the people of Hong Kong. It was also completely ludicrous to claim that Chinese mainland law-enforcement officers would secretly leave the Kowloon West terminal to capture ordinary citizens. The fact that the opposition conjure up so many such false claims to terrify voters suggests they live within their own fantasy bubble. It reaches a point where they cannot see that tens of thousands of people cross the border to and from Shenzhen everyday uneventfully, and the lives of residents on both sides are becoming more and more intertwined.

Secondly, the primary election held by opposition parties was extremely brutal and ugly since they believed victory was certain. The primary election was biased by design since there were few polling stations and the votes cast were small in number. What was most outrageous and disgraceful was that when the primary election result was not what the masterminds behind the opposition camp wanted, they simply appointed a new candidate out of the blue and declared him the genuine “Plan B”. This charade should clear up any doubts in people’s minds as to the true nature of the opposition parties. They keep chanting the slogan of wanting “real universal suffrage”, yet they orchestrated and executed a fake primary election among themselves. Another disturbing episode occurred when the opposition lost the Kowloon West constituency and started to play the blame game. The masterminds, supported by a powerful propaganda machine, firmly placed the blame on a seasoned member, whom they had illegitimately deprived of his candidacy despite his good performance in the primary election. Many who have followed events closely, as a number of voters did, would have surely felt a chill down their spines.

Last but not least, in stark contrast with the opposition, the pro-establishment camp was unprecedentedly united and faced the tough by-election battle together. This was probably one of the reasons for their good performance in the by-election. Since the election results were so close this time, the possible upcoming by-elections for Kowloon West and New Territories East will undoubtedly be more fiercely contested and more voters are likely to come out to vote.