What you need to know about this year’s District Council elections.
Photo: Huge queues on Fortress Hill Road as people waited to vote on Sunday afternoon. Credit to Don North.
Yesterday, millions of people showed up in droves at their local polling station to take part in 2019’s District Council elections. By the time polls closed, a record-breaking 2.94 million people placed their votes, making it a provisional cumulative turnout rate of about 71.2%.
Major highlights from the elections include:
- Pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory, having so far taken nearly 90% of the 452 seats – a total of 17 out of the 18 district councils, which were all previously occupied by pro-establishment members.
- Junius Ho lost his election in Tuen Mun by more than 1,000 votes to Democratic Party’s Cary Lo.
- Michael Tien, a pro-establishment lawmaker, lost his Discovery Park seat in Tsuen Wan to pro-democracy candidate Lau Cheuk-yu by 694 votes.
- Starry Lee, chairman of DAB, won her district (To Kwa Wan North, Kowloon City district) 300 votes ahead of former League of Social Democrats lawmaker “long-hair’ Leung Kwok-hung.
- Alice Mak, who made headlines in June for allegedly cursing at Carrie Lam in a closed-doors meeting, took no time to pin the blame on Carrie Lam for the pro-establishment’s massive loss. “The government’s poor governance has given rise to many public grievances. In the election campaign, pro-government candidates have been unfairly treated.” she says. Mak lost in her constituency (Wai Ying, Kwai Tsing district) to the Civic Party’s Henry Sin Ho-fai.
Highlights will be updated as events occur.
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