Political campaigning for the LegCo election was immediately suspended following the fire, though government-organised debate forums resumed after a few days. Carnivals organised for the election campaign have also been cancelled.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong chief executive John Lee has insisted the LegCo election continue as planned as “we must move forward before we can turn our grief into strength”.<\/p>\n
He said that the new legislators would be able to quickly support reconstruction and reforms.<\/p>\n
John P Burns, emeritus professor and Chinese politics expert with the University of Hong Kong, said he believed the government would interpret a high turnout as a sign that voters perceive Hong Kong’s reshaped political system as “relatively legitimate”.<\/p>\n
But he expected the numbers to be low, in part due to the Tai Po fire.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that most Hongkongers have traditionally supported the pan-democrat opposition – which have been effectively barred from taking part. “I think they won’t be convinced to participate this time, just as they mostly stayed away in 2021,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mobilising the pro-establishment voters following the fire would be difficult for the government as well, he added.<\/p>\n
Some in that camp will be impressed by how authorities have speedily re-housed those made homeless in the fire and the aid authorities have provided, “which by any measure has been rapid and relatively generous”, noted Prof Burns.<\/p>\n
But others “may stay away from the polls” as they are “disappointed, even angry, by the governance problems the fire has exposed”, he said.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong’s national security office this week reposted a commentary from a pro-Beijing news outlet that urged residents to vote to show support for government’s reconstruction efforts.<\/p>\n
“Building a good future together starts with this vote. If you truly love Hong Kong, you should sincerely vote,” the commentary said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political campaigning for the LegCo election was immediately suspended following the fire, though government-organised debate forums resumed after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-302737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}