Protests fail to impact HK election result

Candidates favoring closer ties with Beijing have managed to hold a majority of seats in Hong Kong's legislative council after Sunday's election, despite recent protests against mandatory patriotic education that could have swayed sympathies in favor of local pan-democracy parties.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong remains the largest party in the new council after securing 13 seats, according to the election results.

About 1.83 million ballots were counted, with a turnout rate of 53 percent, a rise of 45.2 percent since the 2008 Legislative Council Election, Electoral Affairs Commission Chairman Justice Barnabas Fung said after the election.

The camp won 43 seats out of 70, a result that observers say demonstrates "rational" mainstream public opinion within Hong Kong amid a near record turnout, which in turn was fueled by the demonstrations that had encouraged more people to participate in local political affairs.

The election marked the first time a majority of seats in the city's legislature was elected by direct vote, a step forward in Hong Kong's tentative democratic evolution, the Wall Street Journal commented.

The pan-democracy camp was led by veteran Albert Ho who quit as chairman of the Democratic Party, even though he was re-elected after what he called a "bad defeat" in Sunday's poll.

Democrats lamented their failure to turn the rising anti-mainland sentiment into more significant electoral gains, AFP reported.

They blamed deep divisions within the democratic camp and the rising popularity of radical groups that want the immediate implementation of full democracy, it said.

"The decline in the seats acquired by the pan-Democracy camp could be viewed as a sign of the camp's split," Zhang Dinghuai, a professor at the Contemporary Chinese Politics Research Institute at Shenzhen University, told the Global Times.

The pan-Democracy camp gained a third of the seats, granting the bloc the status of "critical minority" as legislative bills in Hong Kong must acquire approval from two thirds of the representatives before they take effect.

The number of seats increased by 10, with five being added to geographical constituencies, and the other five being directly elected for functional constituencies (meaning members of certain professions or interest groups can vote for them) for district councils. These seats were dubbed "super seats," treating Hong Kong as a single constituency.

Among the total of 70 members, 35 are directly elected members from the five geographical constituencies. The other 35 members are from functional constituencies.

"Judging from the ballot result, the recent protests showed little impact on the election," Zhang said. Zhang added that the proportion of the camp favoring closer Beijing ties in the Legislative Council has stayed at around 60 percent.

"Hong Kong people have shown a sense of rationality in the election," said Zhang.

Demonstrations by as many as 100,000 participants opposing the proposed mandatory patriotic classes subsided on the eve of the election, shortly after a last minute change by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region CY Leung who stepped back from the plan.

"The protests against the patriotic program reflect the anxiety that's been brewing among Hong Kong people toward the increasing political influence from the central government," said Peter T.Y. Cheung, a political science professor from the University of Hong Kong.

Cheung said he believed that although the demonstration has prompted more people who sympathize with the pan-Democracy camp to vote, it also had an huge impact on supporters of the camp favoring closer Beijing ties.

"If you look at the result, you can find that they (the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong) have been very successful in coordinating the election ... They are very organized … Their votes were distributed very evenly. For democrats, there was much less coordination. Sometimes they lost because they were not organized enough," said Cheung.