A Hong Kong government subsidy offered to elderly community centres for helping senior voters cast their ballots in the “patriots-only” District Council race will not affect election fairness, an official has said.
Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak on Tuesday backed the government’s offer of a one-off HK$20,000 allowance to 215 centres to provide special services to assist facility users to vote on Sunday.
The services included arranging transportation and staff to assist elderly people and their carers travel to and from polling stations. Hong Kong’s elderly community centres are operated by NGOs with funding from the Social Welfare Department (SWD).
According to local media, the SWD said around 180 elderly centres had applied for the government subsidy as of Monday, costing the government at least HK$3.6 million.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday, Mak said Hong Kong had a robust legal framework to ensure elections were conducted in a fair and just manner. The subsidy announced on Monday only intended to facilitate elderly electors in casting their votes and the fairness of the revamped election would not be affected, she said.
“The arrangement only makes it more convenient for elderly voters to exercise their civic rights and vote. This will definitely not affect the fairness of the election,” the official said in Cantonese.
In previous elections, local media have reported on controversial efforts to bus elderly residents to polling stations, alleging that they were instructed who to vote for.
Sunday’s election is the first since Hong Kong changed the composition and appointment method of 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.
Mak said on Tuesday that the government attached great importance to the election and various departments would adopt different measures to ensure all election procedures were “clear and fair.”
She added districts would see large-scale service teams with 470 newly-elected district councillors, more than 5,000 Community Care Team members and over 2,000 members serving in three government-appointed committees.
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