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Hong Kong’s pro-democracy parties sweeping pro-Beijing establishment aside in local elections, early results show


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Shibani Mahtani, Simon Denyer, Tiffany Liang and Anna Kam

November 24, 2019 at 2:18 p.m. CST

HONG KONG — Early results from Hong Kong district council elections on Sunday showed a massive surge of support for pro-democracy parties on Monday in a significant endorsement of the protest movement and an indictment of the pro-Beijing establishment seen as responsible for months of unrest in the city.

Voters took to the polls in record numbers to cast ballots in the only fully democratic election in the Chinese territory, an early sign they wanted to send a strong message to their government and to the Communist Party in Beijing.

Early results compiled by the South China Morning Post showed pro-democracy parties winning 148 of the first 168 seats to be declared, pro-Beijing parties taking 17, and independents three. Several prominent figures in the protest movement won; several pro-establishment figures were unseated.

With 284 of the 452 seats still to be declared, pro-democracy parties had already surpassed the number of seats they won in 2015, while the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong said it had already lost in more than 100 of the 182 races it had contested.

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The question is if these trends hold will the PRC give a damn?

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Landslide democratic win puts pressure on leader of Chinese-ruled Hong Kong

Twinnie Siu, Jessie Pang

Nov. 25 2019

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong’s leader pledged to listen to public opinion on Monday and referred to deep-seated problems in society after a landslide election victory by opponents of Chinese rule amid months of sometimes violent pro-democracy unrest.

Democratic candidates secured almost 90% of 452 district council seats in Sunday’s poll, held during a rare weekend lull in clashes with police, despite a strongly resourced and mobilized pro-establishment opposition.

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On Point: Hong Kong's Ballots Challenge Chairman Mao's Gun Barrels

Austin Bay

Nov. 26 2019

The Hong Kong pro-democracy movement's overwhelming Nov. 24 election victory demonstrates that the city's brave citizens disdain Mao Zedong's political ditties almost as much as they scorn the crooked Chinese Communist Party tyranny the mass-murdering former chairman created.

Mao, who fancied himself a poet and philosopher, declared that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. From the Soviet Kremlin to the University of California, Berkeley to Jane Fonda, the global left waved Mao's Little Red Book, applauded his so-called "thoughts" and proclaimed radical Marxism to be humanity's future.

Hong Kong's 2019 protests and the recent district election results are actions --deeds, not words -- that directly challenge Mao's gun barrel maxim and lay claim to a future where political power expresses the will of free people.

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Nevertheless, what a stunning victory and an embarrassment for Beijing. Turnout was 71% -- most impressive. The pro-democracy candidates won around 90% of the vote for the 452 contested seats on Hong Kong's 18 district councils. A late report gave the freedom fighters 389 seats and the Beijing faction about 60. The freedom fighters now control 17 districts. What a wipeout.

 

Several sources report the pro-Beijing faction is sometimes called "the establishment."

Scan the headlines. The "establishments" corrupting some three dozen countries on planet Earth are grappling with mass public dissatisfaction -- and the U.S. is on that list.

Perhaps we should reprise a Cold War-era communist propaganda trope and apply it with acid irony to the Beijing nabobs who would trade Hong Kong's freedom for a high personal social credit rating.

Call them the "running dog-lackey-nabobs of the Chinese Communist Party imperialist elites." Too wordy, perhaps -- but accurate. And "nabob" is le mot juste.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Dec. 16 2019

Thousands of Arrests Won't Stop Hong Kong Protests, Movement Hits Half Year Mark Following the sieges on the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University, the local district council elections saw a major victory for democratic candidates across the region. Although the extradition bill that sparked the movement was withdrawn months ago, the movement became about the future of the special administrative region, with four of the five demands still unaddressed. Last week marked the six month anniversary and saw one of the largest marches since the movement’s start in June.

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