Brand new "patriots only” Election Committee formed

A new Election Committee, which will be tasked with picking the next Chief Executive and 40 of the SAR's new lawmakers, was formed on Monday in the first poll after Beijing's electoral changes aimed at having "patriots" rule Hong Kong.

All candidates had earlier passed a vetting process that ensured only those deemed to be patriotic can hold public office.

Among the winners, The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong snatched around 150 seats. Federation of Trade Unions won 76 seats. 

Voting started on Sunday and the turnout was nearly 90 percent – with 4,380 eligible voters casting ballots in 13 competitive subsectors.

Three of them reached a 100 percent turnout, including the 30-voter legal subsector, the 55-voter architectural, surveying, planning and landscape subsector and the 54-voter technology and innovation subsector.

The elections results can be viewed here.

After the electoral changes, more than 1,100 of the 1,500 seats in the committee are either ex-officio members, appointed or uncontested. The remaining 364 seats in 13 subsectors are chosen from 412 candidates by 4,889 qualified voters.

Executive councillor Ronny Tong Ka-wah, former chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Council Anthony Neoh, and former Law Society president Melissa Kaye Pang were among the 15 elected from the legal subsector.

Tong said the voter base might have been a lot smaller than in the last election in 2016 – but his sector's 100 percent turnout proved that the system was representative.

One of the voters, Chua Hoi-wai, from the Council of Social Service, said there were a variety of candidates to choose from in the social welfare polls. But another voter, Francis Lun from the financial services sub-sector, said with the number of voters slashed from nearly a quarter of a million to fewer than 8,000, he thinks this was "a small-circle election."