Online claims that Hong Kong government employees may be penalised if they do not vote in the “patriots-only” District Council race were misinformation intended to “sow discord” in the civil service, the city’s No. 2 official has said.
There were individuals with “ulterior motives” spreading false information online about potential penalties for civil servants who do not cast a ballot in the recently restricted District Council race, Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan said on Sunday.
The official rejected the speculations at a civil service family day in support of the overhauled election organised by the Disciplined Services Consultative Council and the Police Force Council.
“There are individuals with ulterior motives who wished to spread false information to sow discord and make civil servants less united and undermine Hong Kong. We must be cautious about this ‘soft resistance’,” Chan said in Cantonese. The civil service was “very, very united” and was not affected by the rumours, he added.
Give gov’t staff time to vote
Local media reported on Sunday citing sources that Secretary for Civil Service Ingrid Yeung had written to all department heads and said government employees must be allowed to leave their posts and vote when polls open this coming Sunday. Civil servants will also be allowed to claim back transportation fees incurred from travelling between the office and the polling station, local media reports read.
Sources also told local media that government subcontractors must give their employees sufficient time to go to the polling station. Failure to do so may be made note of and could affect their chances of earning another government contract in the future, the reports read.
The District Council election on this coming Sunday is the first since Hong Kong changed the composition and method of appointing the district-level government advisory body.
Plans to overhaul the District Council elections were unveiled in May 2023 to ensure only “patriots” were elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019.
The number of seats chosen democratically by the public were slashed from 452 to 88 – reducing the power of public votes to a fifth. The rest are to be chosen by the city’s leader and government-appointed committees.
Constituency boundaries were redrawn, the opposition were shut out, voting hours were slashed by an hour, and each local council is to be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.
The government hoped each civil servant would vote because they had “dual responsibilities” of fulfilling their civic duties and the duty to support government work, Chan told the press on Sunday. There was no mechanism to monitor civil servants to vote and there would be no punishment for those who do not vote, the official said, adding there may be “special reasons” for people not to vote on the day, such as being sick.
“We do not have any form of punishment, and it will not affect promotions either… we encourage and hope that all civil servants will vote, and it is not done through a punitive approach,” Chan said.
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