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Hong Kong Legco election 2021
Hong KongPolitics

Hong Kong elections: Beijing loyalists vying for Legco seats seek to impress powerful committee voters in televised debate

  • The forum, organised by the Hong Kong Coalition, draws all 51 candidates running in the Election Committee constituency
  • They argued for pushing ahead with a local version of the national security law as mandated by Article 23 of the Basic Law

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The Friday forum lasted four hours. Photo: Winson Wong
Natalie Wong

Hong Kong should quickly enact additional national security protections and press ahead with eliminating the legacy of British colonial rule, candidates argued on Friday in a debate pitch for the biggest block of seats in the revamped legislature.

The televised face-off, the first held over a Legislative Council race, drew all 51 hopefuls eligible for the 40 spots reserved for the powerful Election Committee that dominates the city’s political landscape and will hold sway in the enlarged, 90-member chamber chosen on December 19.

Pressed into a tightly controlled format, the candidates were divided into groups of three or four and given eight minutes to introduce themselves and debate a single topic while posing questions to their rivals.

The forum was hosted by the Hong Kong Coalition, a pro-Beijing group created by former city leaders Tung Chee-hwa and Leung Chun-ying being, and spanned four hours, with the candidates receiving all questions about social policies in advance.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given most were firmly aligned with the central government, the participants found themselves more often agreeing on the issues than attacking one another. With the opposition absent from the election, a challenge facing the candidates is how they can distinguish themselves individually when they all belong to the same camp.

Many argued that Hong Kong should press ahead with fulfilling the obligations laid out in Article 23 of the Basic Law mini-constitution that requires the city to enact local legislation protecting national security. That bill would be in addition to the national security law Beijing imposed last year that bans secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.

The government abandoned a bill based on Article 23 after more than 500,000 people, who feared their rights and freedoms would be curbed, took to the streets on July 1, 2003.

Reforms must be carried out to make them genuine Chinese, instead of followers of the British system
Candidate Andrew Fung
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