April Zhang

Opinion | District council elections: how Hong Kong opposition parties can reinvent themselves

With no presence in Legco and, soon, on the district councils, the opposition’s nomination failure is a chance to consider how they can better serve Hong Kong

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A poster for the 2023 district council elections is seen in Mong Kok on October 30. No candidate in the opposition camp has garnered enough nominations to stand. Photo: Jelly Tse

April Zhang

Published: 4:30pm, 17 Nov 2023

Hong Kong’s opposition parties have good reason to be disappointed. They have failed to secure enough nominations to allow any hopefuls to stand for the coming district council elections on December 10.

This hopeless feeling is captured in the words of Lo Kin-hei, chairman of the Democratic Party, the biggest opposition group in the city, when he said: “We feel a great sense of powerlessness.” The party has no seats in the Legislative Council, and will have no seats at the district level either after the elections.

But when Lo said they had “completely no idea” why their candidates had failed to get nominated, it shows they have turned a blind eye to reality.

It is quite clear, even to a casual observer of the city’s political situation, that this is a direct consequence of the 2019 anti-government protests and an indirect result of previous clashes between opposition parties and the government.

Not only have the opposition not convinced committee members to nominate them for the district elections, they have not convinced ordinary residents, such as myself, that they can advance the city’s democratic environment.

The 2019 protests gave the opposition camp an unprecedented landslide victory in the district council elections that year. Believing that the victory was an endorsement of the demands of the protesters, they vowed to push ahead with their agenda.