Hong Kong voter turnout slumps to record low after Beijing purge

Hong Kong | Hong Kong’s local council elections drew their lowest turnout in nearly three decades, as residents snubbed a system lacking political diversity after a revamp to cement China’s control.

Only 27.5 per cent of the 4.3 million eligible voters cast ballots on Sunday in the local elections, David Lok, chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission said on Monday. That was the lowest figure since the 1994 polls under then-British colonial Governor Chris Patten, the earliest for which records are available.

The turnout was a dramatic reverse from the last polls in 2019, when a record 71 per cent of voters turned out and handed pro-democracy candidates a landslide victory, as a tsunami of dissatisfaction swept the city. That stunning repudiation of the Beijing-backed government came after months of increasingly violent protests seeking meaningful polls.

President Xi Jinping’s ruling Communist Party imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong months later that’s since been used to lock up scores of the city’s political opposition. The finance hub this year redesigned local district councils to slash the number of directly elected seats and effectively exclude pro-democracy candidates.

“The election no longer serves as a channel for citizens to speak to authority,” John Burns, emeritus professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, said before the polls. “Had authorities permitted some pan-Democrats or middle-of-the-road candidates, turnout would likely increase.”