Hong Kong’s opposition pro-democracy movement has made unprecedented gains in the Chinese territory’s district council elections, early results show.<\/p>\n
According to the figures, pro-democracy candidates have won 278 seats so far, and pro-Beijing candidates 42.<\/p>\n
Despite fears the vote could be disrupted or cancelled over the unrest, it went ahead peacefully.
\nThe election was seen as a test of support for the government after months of unrest, protests and clashes.<\/p>\n
The government and Beijing had been hoping the election would bring a show of support from the so-called “silent majority”, but that did not materialise. Instead some significant pro-Beijing candidates lost council seats.<\/p>\n
One controversial pro-Beijing lawmaker, who lost his seat, Junius Ho, said “heaven and earth have been turned upside down”.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong’s district councillors have little political power and mainly deal with local issues such as bus routes and rubbish collection, so the district elections don’t normally generate such interest.<\/p>\n
But these polls were the first time people could express at the ballot box their opinion on embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s handling of the crisis, which was sparked by a now withdrawn extradition law.<\/p>\n
A record 4.1 million people had registered to vote – more than half the population.<\/p>\n
And more than 2.9m people cast votes for the 452 seats available, a turnout of more than 71%, against 47% in 2015.<\/p>\n
The weekend was the first in months without any clashes or violence between protesters and police.<\/p>\n
“Facing the extremely challenging situation, I’m pleased to say… we have a relatively calm and peaceful environment for [the] election today,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said after voting.<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hong Kong’s opposition pro-democracy movement has made unprecedented gains in the Chinese territory’s district council elections, early results show. According to the figures, pro-democracy candidates have won 278 seats so far, and pro-Beijing candidates 42. Despite fears the vote could be disrupted or cancelled over the unrest, it went ahead peacefully. The election was seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions\/2437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}