(Reuters) – Hong Kong voters thronged the polls on Sunday, many fuelled by anti-China sentiment, to vote for a new legislature, in a sign of more problems ahead for the city’s new Beijing-backed leader Leung Chun-ying.
About 53 percent of 3.4 million registered voters cast their ballots – up from 45.2 percent in the last election in 2008 – a day after Leung backed down from a plan for compulsory patriotic Chinese education in schools, a policy that drew tens of thousands of people to a 10-day protest.
Results are expected to start trickling in from 6 a.m. on Monday (2200 GMT on Sunday) until around midday.
Although the outcome will not change Leung’s policy position, high voter turnout is likely to benefit the opposition pro-democracy camp and make it more difficult for him to pass measures in a fractious legislature during his five-year term.
“The national education issue antagonized many parents, so many of them came out to vote,” said Lingnan University politics professor Li Pang-kwong, referring to the patriotism classes that protesters described as Communist Party propaganda aimed at indoctrinating children.
“It is also because of dissatisfaction with the performance of the Hong Kong government and emergence of a strong Hong Kong identify due to unhappiness with having to compete with new settlers and tourists from mainland China for housing, transport, hospital beds and so on,” Li said.
