Category: Hong Kong politics
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The big story was the collapse of the Liberal Party in the geographical constituencies, but there were two other things that caught my attention. The first was that the pan-democrats were incredibly fortunate with the results. For example, in NT East they got 57% of the vote and won 71% of the seats, and something…
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The Legco elections take place today, and I have to admit that I’m having trouble taking them seriously. The first problem is that we are not electing a government – oh no, that isn’t the way things work here. That leads directly to the second problem – politics in Hong Kong is more about posturing…
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A glorious rag-bag of policies from one of the candidates who isn’t going to win a seat in Legco on Sunday. I love the sheer randomness of the policies – some good, some bad (cancelling petrol tax), and some just a bit baffling (what exactly is the current toilet ratio?). ilet
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Before Sunday’s by-election, Lau Nai-keung offered this “simple” analysis (End of the line for the pan-democrats? – subscription required): All eyes are on the turnout rate for this Sunday’s Legislative Council by-election. There are roughly 600,000 registered voters in the Hong Kong Island constituency. Judging by the results of the recent district council elections, the “loyalists” can…
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A high-profile by-election in which the two main candidates are former civil servants (Democracy woman wins HK poll as the BBC rather strangely puts it). How exciting is that? In other places it might be a TV or film star, or at least a big-name politician, but not in Hong Kong. No, we get two…
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Recently, I have become rather bad at reading Hong Kong blogs. Mainly it’s sheer laziness, but the problem is that there are just too many of them, and having got them all set up in an RSS reader it’s all too easy to check half a dozen and overlook the rest. Which is a pity,…
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Hong Kong is not ready for democracy, according to the chairman of the DAB (Fury at DAB chief’s Tiananmen tirade – subscription required): Hong Kong will not be ready for universal suffrage until around 2022 because the people lack national identity and many still believe there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the…
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One thing I find slightly strange about (English language) Hong Kong blogs is that you very rarely get anything even approaching controversy, let alone any feuds, between bloggers. Perhaps this is because there aren’t that many of us, and that most people steer clear of politics. One exception is Roland Soong’s ESWN. I’ve mentioned this…
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It’s hardly unknown for a government to have a giveaway budget just before an election. Yesterday there were all sorts of tax cuts and rebates, and later this month we have the election for the Chief Executive. Except that we already know who will win the election, and this "bonanza" ought to be the cause…
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The SCMP seem to have wasted some money on a survey about what ‘opinion leaders’ think about tax reform. And the answer is, er, well, actually they aren’t quite sure. However, having paid for the survey, the SCMP were determined to publish it (though maybe it wasn’t wise to make the actual Powerpoint presentation available…
Ordinary Gweilo 