Less than a third of Hong Kong citizens voted in Sunday’s election for the Legislative Council, shortly after a deadly fire in seven residential high-rises killed 159 people.
According to official data, the turnout was 31.9 percent, which means that about 1.3 million of the 4.13 million registered voters cast their ballots. The final results have not been released yet.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council is not entirely freely elected. Pro-democracy candidates did not participate this time, and all candidates had to show loyalty to China in order to be on the ballot. Only 20 of the 90 representatives are directly elected, while the rest are elected by political committees and industry representatives.
Although there were calls for the election to be postponed due to the massive fire, Chief Executive Officer John Lee decided to go ahead with the vote as planned. Observers had expected low turnout in the city of about 7.5 million, with the previous lowest turnout being 30.2 percent in the 2021 election.
(Vijesti.ba)
