Arya News - Voters in Hong Kong stayed home in large number in a legislative election at a time when the political system is battling with legitimacy challenges.
Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Less than one-third of people eligible to vote in elections for Hong Kong"s legislature turned out to cast their ballots.
Turnout in Sunday"s poll in the former British colony -- now a special administrative region of China -- hit a near record low of 31.9%, just above the 30.2% recorded in 2021.
Fewer people overall were voting for candidates to fill 20 of the seats in the 90-seat Legislative Council because 341,500 fewer people were registered to vote despite a $165 million government drive to out get the vote, including exended polling station hours, a major publicity campaign and vouchers redeemable with local businesses.
The final turnout percentage equated to 1.32 million people, compared with 1.35 million in 2021.
The remaining 70 seats were indirectly elected, either by a committee or by groups representing various professions or organizations in Hong Kong where the turnout was as high as 99%.
Prior to a shakeup of the electoral system that slashed the number of directly elected seats prior to elections in 2021 in the wake of street battles in 2019-20 between police and demonstrators protesting a tough new national security law, turnout routinely topped 50%.
Staying away from the polls as a way of showing discontent is legal but encouraging others to do so became a criminal offense in the same 2021 reforms, with anti-corrution authorities saying they had arrested 11 people during the current election cycle for allegedly inciting people not to vote, or to spoil their ballots.
Imposed by Beijing, the reforms also changed selection processes to ensure only those considered sufficiently "patriotic" would be permitted to run for office by requiring candidates to secure nominations from a small circle of political elites.
The net effect was to further reduce democratic representation in the legislature, which was already a rubber-stamp chamber, a hangover from colonial administrations during 156 years of British rule.
Sunday"s poll came just over a week after a devastating blaze at a high-rise apartments development killed at least 159, the territory"s deadliest disaster in decades, amid growing anger over safety violations at the complex, which was undergoing major works.
Calls for answers over whether officials were enforcing regulations properly and for accountability rattled the government with their echoes of the 2019 protests, which started off small but spiralled out of control into a full-blown crisis that rocked Hong Kong to its core.
The heavy-handed response of the authorities, tearing down a makeshift, but unauthorised memorial to the fire victims, taking down a university "democracy wall" calling for justice for the victims and arresting people organizing protests on suspicion of sedition, were seen as further eroding voter trust.