Hong Kong Island (constituency)

Hong Kong Island is a constituency in the elections for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

Contents

Overview

The constituency covers all the four districts on the Hong Kong Island, namely, Central and Western, Eastern, Southern and Wan Chai.

Demographics

2008 members

Members of the council currently representing this constituency are:

2004 members

Name Affiliation Alignment
Choy So Yuk Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong pro-Beijing
Audrey Eu SC ran as an independent, member of the Basic Law Article 45 Concern Group pro-democracy
Rita Fan independent pro-Beijing
Martin Lee SC Democratic Party pro-democracy
Ma Lik (deceased) Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong pro-Beijing
Dr Yeung Sum Democratic Party pro-democracy

History

The constituency was set up in 1998 election when the largest remainder method (with Hare quota) of the proportional representative electoral system was introduced, replacing four single-member constituencies of the 1995 election. 4, 5 and 6 members were returned from this constituency in the 1998, 2000 and 2004 elections respectively. No change of boundary had been made throughout since 1998.

2007 by-election

2004 election

In 2004, the population in this constituency was ?. Out of those who were eligible to register as voters (permanent residents who are over 18 of age), ? registered. ? or ?% of registered voters voted in the election, with 379,913 valid votes.

The Hong Kong legislative election on 12 September 2004 returned six candidates to office based on a party list proportional representation system, with the seats assigned according to the largest remainder method. The pro-Beijing camp returned two candidates, and pro-democracy camps three, with the remainder filled by the independent Rita Fan.

Six lists or tickets took part in the election, with the pro-Beijing DAB filling Ma Lik, Choy So Yuk and four other candidates on one ticket, and the pro-democracy camp filled two tickets, one consisted of Martin Lee, Yeung Sum and Lai Chi Keung of the Democratic Party, and the other consisted of Audrey Eu and Cyd Ho, both ran as independents. Other candidates included Tsang Kin Shing, also belonged to the pro-democracy camp, who ran with two other candidates on his ticket without cooperating with the rest of the camp; and Kelvin Wong, an independent who declared his occupation as insurance agent.

Rita Fan, the President (i.e. Speaker) of the Legislative Council and a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, joined the election with her own one-candidate ticket. She attracted support mainly from the middle and upper class voters from the sandwich of Hong Kong's pro-Beijing vs. pro-democracy political spectrum, but was also backed strategically by the pro-Beijing camp.

The election returned Lee, Yeung, Ma, Eu, Fan and Choy to the Council.

No. Name of candidates Affiliation Alignment Votes Seats
1 Ma Lik
Choi So Yuk (蔡素玉)
Christopher Chung (鍾樹根)
Yeung Wai Foon (楊位款)
Lee Yuen Kwong (李元剛)
Cheung Kwok Kwan (張國鈞)
Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong pro-Beijing 74,659 2
2 Rita Fan Independent pro-Beijing 65,661 1
3 Tsang Kin Shing (Bull, 曾健成, 阿牛)
Chung Chung Fai (鍾松輝, 鍾輝)
Tang Chui Chung (鄧徐中)
Independents (Chung was vice president of HKCTU, but ran as an independent) pro-democracy 5,313 0
4 Yeung Sum
Martin Lee
Joseph Lai (黎志強)
Democratic Party pro-democracy 131,788 2
5 Kelvin Wong (黃錦輝) Independent ? 2,830 0
6 Audrey Eu
Cyd Ho
Independents (Eu was member of the Basic Law Article 45 Concern Group, Ho was member of Civic Act-up and The Frontier) pro-democracy 73,844 1
List 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total
Votes 74,659 65,661 5,313 131,788 2,830 73,844 379,913
Seats   6
Hare quota   63,318
Quotas received 1.18 1.04 0.08 2.08 0.04 1.17  
Automatic seats 1 1 0 2 0 1 5
Remainder 0.18 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.04 0.17  
Surplus seats 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
Total seats 2 1 0 2 0 1 6

The two mainstream tickets of the pro-democracy camp intended to translate their support into four seats, with the slogan "1+1=4", provided that their supporters would have cast their votes evenly to the two tickets. Pre-election polls showed, nevertheless, that the Eu-Ho ticket had far more supporters, causing the Democratic Party to request all supporters of the camp to vote instead for their ticket just two weeks before the election.

It turned out that the Democratic Party drew too many votes from the Eu-Ho ticket, causing Cyd Ho defeat by DAB's Choy So Yuk, by a slim margin of 815 votes (or 0.23% of all valid votes). Should the Democratic Party drew around 1900 more votes from the Eu-Ho ticket, the third-rank candidate on their list would have defeated Choy.

When the results were announced in the morning of the following day, Martin Lee said before cameras "I'd rather lose with dignity than win like this",[1] on the "unexpected" defeat of Cyd Ho.

2000 byelection

2000 election

1998 election

See also

References