{Pro-China contingent to continue to dominate city’s legislature despite a strong showing by pro-independence candidates.}<\/p>\n
Pro-democracy groups have retained their one-third veto bloc in Hong Kong’s 70-seat Legislative Council (Legco), with the final votes from the election marked by a record turnout still being counted.<\/p>\n
Official results for most constituencies show that pro-democracy candidates have won at least 27 seats – three more than required for the power to block attempts by the Hong Kong government to enact unpopular or controversial legislation.<\/p>\n
The results released on Monday showed several pro-independence candidates emerging victorious in the weekend’s election – the first since the so-called Umbrella Revolution of 2014.<\/p>\n
At some polling stations there were long queues until until 2:30am local time (18:30 Sunday GMT) – four hours later than the scheduled cut-off time – with a turnout of almost 60 percent of 3.7 million voters.<\/p>\n
Nathan Law Kwun-chung, the former student leader of the Umbrella Revolution rallies, was declared a winner on Monday.<\/p>\n
Law, 23, contested as a candidate of the Demosisto party, which wants a referendum for Hong Kong residents on whether they should stay part of China.<\/p>\n
“I think Hong Kongers really wanted change,” he said, celebrating his win. “Young people have a sense of urgency when it comes to the future.”<\/p>\n
{{Pro-democracy rallies}}<\/p>\n
Law was a key figure in the 2014 pro-democracy movement, which saw parts of downtown Hong Kong occupied for 79 days in protest against a controversial electoral reform bill.<\/p>\n
The city-wide vote was the biggest since mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 and saw candidates fighting for seats in the Legco as concerns grew that China is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city.<\/p>\n
“There have been some emotional scenes here at the election centre as the results came in, bearing out the expected trend that has been predicting the rise of the so-called localist movement,” Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Hong Kong, said.<\/p>\n
“These new parties and groupings have grown largely out of the Occupy movement two years ago, groups with a very different agenda from the mainstream pro-democracy groups.<\/p>\n
“Some key leaders of the pro-democracy parties have lost their seats.”<\/p>\n
Only 40 out of 70 total seats are directly elected by the public, while special-interest groups representing a range of mostly pro-China businesses and social sectors select the other 30 legislators.<\/p>\n
Results as of 5:30am local time showed victories for some young “localist” activists who are pushing for more distance or complete independence from China.<\/p>\n
However, the pro-China contingent will continue to dominate the legislature, as they hold on to their seats in the functional constituency.<\/p>\n
The proposed law will grant all residents the right to vote for the chief executive in 2017 for the first time, but it also inserts a clause that candidates must be vetted by a loyalist committee.<\/p>\n
Most established pro-democracy politicians do not support the notion of independence and may lose seats to voters who now favour more radical new groups.<\/p>\n
“The way the Legislative Council is structured, it still remains effectively a pro-establishment body. But even so, Beijing and Hong Kong will be worried about the results that show how polarised Hong Kong society has become,” the Al Jazeera correspondent said.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s election was marred by accusations of fraud, an uncommon occurrence in the city that was transferred to Chinese control from Britain in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” agreement.<\/p>\n
But Leung Chun-ying, the city’s chief executive, in a statement on Sunday night praised the conduct of the commission in ensuring fair elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Pro-China contingent to continue to dominate city’s legislature despite a strong showing by pro-independence candidates.} Pro-democracy groups have retained their one-third veto bloc in Hong Kong’s 70-seat Legislative Council (Legco), with the final votes from the election marked by a record turnout still being counted. Official results for most constituencies show that pro-democracy candidates have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28344"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28344"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}