Hong Kong delayed a key Legislative Council election scheduled for September for one year due to a recent surge in Covid-19 cases.
“Delaying the Legislative Council election held every four years is a very difficult decision,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said at a Friday night press conference. “But in order to curb the pandemic, ensure public safety and citizens’ health, and meanwhile ensure the election is held under an open and fair environment, this decision is necessary.”
The Asian financial hub saw 121 coronavirus infections on Friday after recording its highest tally yet on Thursday. The city is grappling with a new wave of cases that has seen tighter restrictions — including a two-person limit on public gatherings — that could further impact traditional campaigning.
Lam said she was invoking an emergency powers ordinance to delay the vote and said the government’s decision to do so had the support of China’s central government. She said deploying as many as 34,000 election day volunteers across more than 600 polling stations to assist millions of voters was too dangerous under the circumstances. “It poses a great risk of infection,” she said.
The postponement of the vote until Sept. 5, 2021 caps off a week that saw Hong Kong’s government draw new red lines on how much dissent it would tolerate — and stands to intensify concerns about the preservation of basic freedoms in the financial hub. It could anger President Donald Trump, who has started to roll back the city’s so-called special trading status amid wider tensions between the U.S. and China.
Pro-democracy advocates had hoped to ride the momentum of a landslide victory in last November’s District Council vote to an unprecedented majority in the legislature. They are already reeling from the government’s imposition of a Beijing-imposed national security law last month, which has been widely criticized and let to punitive measures by the Trump administration.
