Hong Kong postpones election for 1 year after spike in Covid-19 cases

The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam has announced the postponement of the city’s key assembly elections, citing an ongoing spike in coronavirus cases.

The election was due to take place on 6 September, and had been seen as an opportunity for pro-democracy parties to win an historic majority amid public dissatisfaction at a new security law imposed by Beijing.

Ms Lam’s government said the vote would be delayed for a year, and that the Chinese national parliament would need to decide on how to fill the resulting gap in the legislative programme.

The chief executive called it the most difficult decision she had had to make since the start of the pandemic, which has seen her government invoke colonial-era emergency rule.

The decision, she said, was a “necessary” one to “protect public health, people’s lives and guarantee fairness of the election”.

“We have 3 million voters going out in one day across Hong Kong, such flow of people would cause high risk of infection,” she said.

Once held up as an example for its success in controlling the Covid-19 outbreak that began in mainland China, Hong Kong’s daily reported cases have risen from single digits a month ago to more than 100 in each of the past 10 days.

Daily Times gathered that the country introduced new measures this week including the mandatory use of face masks in public places, but its outbreak still ranks far below that of many similarly sized cities around the world – fewer than 3,300 cases and just 27 deaths.

Even before the postponement of the election was confirmed, opposition figures had cautioned that any such move would be treated with suspicion.

On Thursday, the Hong Kong government had already barred 12 influential opposition figures from running for seats on the city’s Legislative Council.

The 12 included the prominent young activist Joshua Wong, who said that he would “doubt the veracity of any coronavirus delay” to the September vote.