Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam admits vote revealed 'unhappiness' with government, but offers no concessions

HONG KONG - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam acknowledged Tuesday (Nov 26) that a crushing defeat for the city’s pro-Beijing establishment in weekend polls revealed public dissatisfaction with her government, but she offered no new concessions to the city’s pro-democracy movement.

The district council elections on Sunday laid bare concern over "deficiencies in the government, including unhappiness with the time taken to deal with the current unstable environment and of course to end violence", Mrs Lam said at a weekly press briefing.

The city’s chief executive pledged that her government would "seriously reflect" on the result of the community-level elections in which her pro-Beijing establishment took a severe drubbing, and would "improve governance".

In a rout that stunned the semi-autonomous territory, candidates seeking to loosen control by China seized an overwhelming majority of the 452 elected seats in the city’s 18 district councils, bodies that have historically been firmly in the grip of a Beijing-aligned establishment.

The result, the first vote to be held since protests engulfed the city, was a humiliating rebuke to Beijing and to Mrs Lam, who has dismissed calls for political reform and repeatedly suggested that a silent majority supported her administration.

The poll outcome has re-energised calls by the pro-democracy camp for direct popular elections for the city’s leadership and legislature and a probe into alleged police brutality against demonstrators.

But Mrs Lam sidestepped those calls, instead reiterating an earlier pledge to open a dialogue among all parties in the territory, a proposal that opponents have dismissed as too little, too late.

"What we need to do now is (open) community dialogue and invite social leaders to help us analyse the causes of the disturbances and Hong Kong’s deep-seated social problems, and to come up with solutions," she said.

[[nid:469175]]

The embattled Mrs Lam also said she hoped the peaceful weekend was not just for the elections but a signal that people in the Chinese-ruled city wanted an end to violence.

Hong Kong has enjoyed a rare lull in violence for nearly a week, breaking from six months of often violent anti-government unrest that has plunged the former British colony into its biggest political crisis in decades.

Protests have sprung up on an almost daily basis since June, with flash mobs often gathering with little or no notice, at times forcing the government, businesses, schools and even the city’s international airport to close. 

The violence had escalated up to last week, with protesters hurling petrol bombs and firing arrows at police who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. 

Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997. 

China denies interfering and says it is committed to the "one country, two systems" formula put in place at that time. 

Police say they have shown restraint in the face of potentially deadly attacks.