'Call To Delay Legco Poll Linked To Public Health'

Pro-establishment heavyweight Tam Yiu-chung said his call to postpone the Legco elections was public health-driven, and not linked to his camp's prospects in the upcoming vote.

Tam, who is Hong Kong's sole delegate to the National People's Congress Standing Committee and a former DAB chairman, told a Commercial Radio programme that he only wanted to remind the government to look into whether September's polls should continue if the city's Covid-19 is still not under control by then.

With the election a little more than a month away, Tam said the government cannot be lulled into a "false sense of security".

When told that Singapore and South Korea managed to hold general elections amid the pandemic, Tam said the city-state has half the population of Hong Kong and it's not as densely populated, and that many of the recently-confirmed cases in the SAR couldn't be traced, unlike the Singapore's migrant worker cluster.

He also cited the example of the Tokyo Olympics which has been delayed for a year because of the pandemic, and said the government needs to look into the legal ramifications should the new-term legislature be unable to be constituted and start its work as planned.

After the pro-democracy camp's resounding success in last year's district council elections, there has been speculation that the government would seek to delay the Legco elections to avoid another trouncing for the pro-establishment camp.

In response, the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau says it will closely liaise with health authorities, while evaluating the impact of the pandemic on the elections and formulating various contingency plans.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has said the election would go ahead as planned for now.

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