Lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung has urged pro-democracy electors of the chief executive election committee to field candidates and cast blank ballots on election day, instead of being “kingmakers.”
Leung is one of the four lawmakers facing a legal challenge brought by the government to disqualify them from the legislature. During a protest march on Sunday opposing the move, Leung joked that he may join the election should be face more suppression.
The pro-democracy camp managed to secure at least 325 seats in the 1,194-member election committee, which will ultimately elect the city’s next leader in March. However, it has yet to decide whether or not it will nominate a candidate, or vote for any candidate as a bloc.
In an article he published on Sunday night, Leung wrote that “any election results cannot replace mass protest, they can only be platforms for the masses to achieve full disobedience, to get full universal suffrage.”
Tsang’s ‘collusion’ with business
He then questioned what the advantage would be for social movements if the pro-democracy camp electors vote for Financial Secretary John Tsang.
Leung criticised Tsang for implementing a financial policy of government collusion with business, and ignoring grassroots people during his term. He accused him of only looking up to Beijing on the issues of legislating a sedition law, and the retraction of Beijing’s 2014 decision whereby a nomination committee must vet chief executive candidates before any popular election.
“He is no different from other people in power who wish to run – isn’t it helping a tyrant and silencing ourselves by giving him 325 votes?” he wrote. “It will be an end of the road in the fight for a different fate through mass protests.”
Leung suggested that, instead of voting for those in power, electors should field candidates in order to challenge other nominees. He said they should cast blank votes in protest.
Lawmaker Nathan Law Kwun-chung then turned to Facebook to appeal for comments on whether Leung should enter the Chief Executive race.
“If we have a candidate who has a strong stance, who can target the pro-Beijing camp without stopping, to reveal dark secrets of the Beijing-loyalists, to turn this small-circle election into an absurd drama, what do you think?” Law asked.
Leung then told Ming Pao he never intended to be the chief executive, and that he only wanted to start a discussion over the pro-democracy camp fielding a candidate.
