Hong Kong democrats keep parliamentary veto

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition won 23 seats in the Chinese territory’s 60-member parliament, two fewer than in the last election but still enough to veto major legislation, final results showed today.

Half of the 60 seats are filled by direct elections and the rest are chosen by special interest groups that tend to side with China’s central government in Beijing.

Results announced today show that the opposition Democrats won 23 seats, compared with 25 seats they won in the 2004 legislative elections.

The opposition will still be able to veto major laws that require a two-thirds majority for passage.

The opposition had been expected to fare worse than it did in the last legislative polls four years ago as pragmatic concerns over wages, education and inflation eclipsed issues of democratic reform.

The 2004 vote came amid widespread outrage over proposed national security legislation and the territory’s Beijing-backed leader at the time.

China took much of the momentum out of the democratic reform debate last year when it announced that the territory would not be able to elect its own leader until 2017 at the earliest, or all of its MPs until 2020 or later.

Voter turnout dropped significantly this year. About 1.52 million people, or about 45% of registered voters, cast ballots yesterday – the second-lowest turnout rate since Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997. There was nearly 56% turnout in 2004.

The key threshold for pro-democracy parties was 21 seats. Fewer than that would have cost them their veto power and greatly expanded the ability of conservatives to shape Hong Kong’s election law to China’s favour.

Several key pro-democracy figures retained their seats – Emily Lau, a former journalist and long-time critic of Beijing, and Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran street protester with shoulder-length hair who shocked the political world by winning a seat four years ago.

In the conservative camp, former Hong Kong security chief Regina Ip, who caused an uproar in 2003 by promoting an anti-subversion bill, succeeded in her bid.

Pro-Beijing and pro-government candidates were boosted by growing nationalism, heightened by the Beijing Olympics and a booming mainland economy.

Thirty of the seats are chosen by more than 200,000 members of special interest groups like businesspeople, lawyers and accountants that tend to back Beijing. Fourteen of the interest group seats were uncontested.

In the 30 directly elected seats, often seen as a better gauge of Hong Kong public sentiment, the Democratic Party and its allies actually increased their seats to 19, up one from 2004. The conservative camp, led by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, won 11, down one.

Though Hong Kong came back under China’s control in 1997, it is ruled under separate political and economic systems. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution promises eventual democracy and Western-style civil liberties commonly denied in the mainland.

About 3.4 million of Hong Kong’s seven million people were registered to vote this year.