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Hong Kong elections: voting debacle triggers call to review putting judges ‘living in clouds’ in charge of polls

  • Top government adviser suggests handing responsibility for overseeing polls to those with administrative backgrounds, rather than jurists
  • Officials in firing line over length of time it took to count just a few thousand votes in this month’s Election Committee poll

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Counting in September 19’s Election Committee poll took longer than expected. Photo: Sam Tsang

A top adviser to Hong Kong’s leader has questioned the need for judges who “live in the clouds” to oversee city polls following vote-counting delays in the recent Election Committee race, even as she insisted she was not targeting incumbent Barnabas Fung Wah.

New People’s Party chairwoman Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee said on Monday the role of supervising electoral processes under Beijing’s reformed system would be more suited to those with a solid background in administration than jurists.

“I’m not singling out Fung, but judges live a life very much different from that of ordinary people. They live in the clouds. I wonder how often [Fung] goes into the community,” said Ip, who sits on Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s de facto cabinet, the Executive Council.

Ip was among the pro-establishment lawmakers grilling electoral officials on Monday over the late arrival of results in this month’s Election Committee poll, the first since Beijing overhauled Hong Kong’s elections system to ensure only “patriots” could hold political power.

It took some 14 hours for officers to count about 4,380 votes. Polling stations closed at 6pm on September 19, but the preliminary results did not arrive until 3am the following day, with the full breakdown only coming in at 8am.

Fung, chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission, has previously apologised for the delay, saying frontline staff were partly to blame for not seeking help quickly enough when encountering problems.

At Monday’s meeting of the Legislative Council’s constitutional affairs panel, Ip told Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang Kwok-wai that Fung’s apology was not enough.

“The government should identify the deficiencies and make improvements. A judge is usually appointed because he or she is considered impartial and fair. But there are many other people in society who are also impartial and fair,” she said.

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