Tsang Yok-sing Questions Primaries Optimism

Former Legco President Tsang Yok-sing has questioned whether the turnout in the pro-democracy camp’s primary election was really a significant development as the camp claimed.

The founder of the DAB party made the comments after organiser of the poll, Professor Benny Tai, said pan-democrats may win over 45 seats in the upcoming Legco elections.

Speaking on a talk show hosted by veteran democrat Emily Lau, Tsang noted that nearly two million people voted for pro-democracy candidates in last year’s district council elections, but only around one-third of that number came out to vote over the weekend.

He said he believes the chance of the pan-dems winning a majority in Legco this September is slim. "It is not difficult to identify which would be the additional seats the pan-democrats are likely to win in September," he said.

"So it means eight to nine seats – additional seats – in order to win a majority, and that is, I would say, not a very high probability."

When asked to respond to Tai's projection, Tsang jokingly said that this would be good news for his party, because conventional wisdom has it that “hubris will lead to defeat".

He also said that only time can show that the national security law will not affect the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people.

Tsang said no matter what assurances authorities give, it would be hard to convince sceptics that the new law won't affect the vast majority of people in the SAR.

"I guess the central government, the SAR government will continue telling people, trying to reassure people that only a very few individuals will be targeted; the vast majority of the population will not be affected," he said.

"Of course they will keep telling people this, but people won’t be satisfied with that, even in the international community, they won’t be satisfied."