Rise of the radicals will plunge the legislature, and Hong Kong, into more chaos

While some say the Legislative Council election results are surprising, the writing has been on the wall for some time. Beijing’s white paper on Hong Kong, Occupy Central, the failure of the last attempt at political reform, the Lunar New Year riots in Mong Kok, the missing booksellers and the rejection of the candidacy of popular new political star Edward Leung Tin-kei of Hong Kong Indigenous – plus other incidents threatening “one country, two systems” – all served to ignite the wrath of the young and discontented to vote for radicals to get into Legco. They got their wish on September 4.

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Overall, the democrats (I prefer this generic term rather than the traditional term “pan-democrats”, as many newcomers in this group have a very different political ideology from the traditional pan-dems) have gained one seat in the districts and one in the functional constituencies, getting a total of 29. If you also count Pierre Chan Pui-yin of the medical sector as a democrat, then democrats have reached a historic figure of 30 seats. While this number will not topple the majority, it will help the democrats not only maintain their veto power in the directly elected division in Legco, but also directly threaten the pro-government majority.

This is because in any government-sponsored legislation or resolution, not counting the president who cannot vote, the pro-establishment majority margin is now only four. This definitely does not bode well for the government.

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More specifically, the six newly elected candidates backing localism and self-determination, plus Edward Yiu Chung-yim in the architecture sector, now stand to become the largest political force in Legco on the democrat side. While there are very different political ideologies within this group, they share a common political propensity: they are not afraid to seize control of any meeting by physical force. They have openly said in interviews following the election that occupying the chairman’s or president’s place in any Legco meeting and seizing his microphone by force is now “standard play”. They, together with “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung from the League of Social Democrats and Raymond Chan Chi-chuen of People Power will increase the filibustering legislators from a previous four to a formidable force of nine. Even in the absence of Raymond Wong Yuk-man who failed to retain his seat, this is a force to reckon with.