Last Updated on 2020/07/31
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Hong Kong Governor Carrie Lam during a press conference said that the elections for the Legislative Council due to take place on September 6 have been postponed, adding that the move is supported by the Chinese central government.
Early this week, the Hong Kong government prevented 12 prominent pro-democracy candidates from taking part in the election, including political activist Joshua Wong (you can find our interviews here, here and here).
The local government said that the delay was decided for public health reasons and to “ensure the correctness of the elections”.
The decision appears to have been made after the worrying increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
[Mass disqualification is just the beginning]
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) July 31, 2020
1. #Beijing is staging multiple acts to prevent the opposition bloc from taking the majority in LegCo. They could disqualify us, arrest us, throw us into jail, or even call off the election and create a puppet parliament elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/x8s7fwVACq
According to pro-democracy exponents, the delay is dictated by the need to avoid a heavy defeat in the elections for the legislative council, especially after the adoption of the controversial new national security law which prohibits secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.
The recent primaries to select pro-democracy candidates had attracted more than 600,000 voters, far more than the 170,000 expected by the organizers.
Just last year, the pro-democratic candidates had won the local elections avalanche.