Hong Kong postpones chief executive election to May amid COVID-19 surge
Feb 18, 2022
Hong Kong, February 18 : The election of Hong Kong's chief executive which was earlier scheduled to be held on March 27, will be postponed to May, amid the increasing COVID-19 infections.
The election will now be held on May 8, Chief Executive Carrie Lam told a news briefing on Friday, according to Xinhua News Agency.
This comes two days after Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the Hong Kong government to prioritize containing the local coronavirus outbreak, which reached a record 6,116 daily cases on Thursday, Kyodo News reported.
During a press briefing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam cited the use of the city's Emergency Regulations Ordinance to delay the election. The nomination period, which was slated to begin on Sunday, has also been rescheduled to take place between April 3 and 16.
In July 2020, the Hong Kong government used the same ordinance to postpone the Legislative Council election originally scheduled for September that year by one year, citing public health concerns during the pandemic. It was eventually held last December.
The Western democracies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, had expressed concern over the election results in Hong Kong, where only one seat went to an opposition member in the 90 seat Legislative Council.
Writing in Washington Times, Jianli Yang, said the Legislative Council (LegCo) election in Hong Kong on December 19, 2021, was just a mockery of democracy. With only about 30 per cent of the voters in Hong Kong bothering to exercise their franchise in a sham called election, pro-Beijing candidates swept the polls, beating the moderates and independents, leaving only one seat to an opposition member in the 90 seat Legislative Council.
