Wearing a bright red campaign vest and an enthusiastic smile, Alex Ilyas Mohammad had a busy evening ahead of him. Over the next two hours in a residential stretch of Tsim Sha Tsui, Mohammad approached passersby and ducked in and out of shops, distributing fliers and introducing himself as a candidate running in the recently restricted local elections.
“If you have any problems, I will help you,” he told a shopkeeper in Cantonese at a Chinese herbal medicine shop on Wednesday. “Vote for me, vote for candidate number one.”
The 59-year-old logistics company director is a newcomer to politics, but has been active in community work – especially with ethnic minorities – for around two decades. As the former leader of the Pakistan Association of Hong Kong, Mohammad told HKFP he had been involved in efforts including setting up a Covid-19 vaccination drive at the Kowloon Mosque and organising a bus company recruitment day for ethnic minorities.
Now, the Pakistan-born Hongkonger is among six candidates running in the Yau Tsim Mong South constituency in the upcoming “patriots-only” District Council elections, which were overhauled with drastically reduced democratic representation. Mohammad’s district and Tai Po North both have the most number of hopefuls competing for two seats.
Four of the contenders in Yau Tsim Mong South are running as independents, including Mohammad. The remaining two candidates are members of pro-establishment parties the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) and New People’s Party (NPP).
Members of Hong Kong’s opposition parties, as well as some more middle-of-the-road groups associated with the establishment, were shut out of the district race by the nominations process.
Half of the Yau Tsim Mong South hopefuls were members of the government-appointed committees responsible for nominating who could run.
All quiet on the campaign front
In the weeks leading up to the ballots opening on December 10, the streets outside the constituency’s major MTR stations at rush hour – a hotspot for canvassing in previous District Council elections – saw little more than their usual bustle.
The social media pages of most of the six candidates were updated infrequently, with some contenders going days without a new post. Their content was generic, asking voters to support them without citing concrete policy points.
HKFP reached out to all six candidates for interviews, asking for their canvassing schedule to catch them on their campaign trail. Three of them – independent candidates Rain To and Haywood Guan, and the DAB’s Chris Ip – did not oblige.
Campaigning in Tsim Sha Tsui on Wednesday, Mohammad told HKFP he had been out greeting residents every day over the past month.
In contrast, he said he had barely seen the other candidates canvassing. Many had volunteers handing out fliers on their behalf, often during the early morning rush hour, he observed.
Instead, Mohammad said he liked to campaign personally. After finishing work, he heads out to canvass in the early evening when people are leaving work and have more time to chat.
“Maybe this will be [to] my advantage. I never saw Chris Ip at street booths, just two or three old ladies [distributing fliers],” Mohammad said, referring to his competitor from the DAB.
After 11 year as a district councillor in Yau Tsim Mong, Ip was unseated in 2019 when pro-democracy candidates won by a landslide.
Babu Fakhrul Islam, also running in the Yau Tsim Mong South candidates, told HKFP he had been doing street campaigns and visiting residents in their home.
The 46-year-old Bangladeshi businessman said he hoped to address issues such as those relating to subdivided flats and old buildings in the district.
“I believe that patriotic citizens will always participate in voting as each vote helps shape the community’s future,” he said.
‘A coordinated election’
Hong Kong’s upcoming district race will be the first since the authorities overhauled the electoral system, requiring candidates to obtain nominations from committees stacked with pro-government figures and introducing a vetting process to ensure patriotism. The number of democratically elected seats was also slashed from 452 to 88.
Boundaries have also been withdrawn. The city is now carved into 44 large voter constituencies – down from over 400, which allowed district councillors to more closely cater to residents in their area.
Yau Tsim Mong South spans Yau Ma Tei, Tsim Sha Tsui, Jordan, as well as parts of Hung Hom and West Kowloon, covering glitzy shopping districts and streets lined with buildings home to subdivided flats for the city’s poorest.
With reduced democratic representation, the opposition barred from running and larger constituencies, muted campaigns – and similarly muted interest from the public – are to be expected, said Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor who researches Chinese politics at the City University of Hong Kong.
“I think for many people, this is like a coordinated election. You don’t see the citizens being very enthusiastic. For candidates, their results are not that heavily dependent on their campaign performance,” Liu said.
He added that the outcome of the elections was likely more linked to the candidates, or their political parties’ ties, with the establishment or the Central government.
“People need a reason to vote, and there’s not a strong reason now,” Liu added.
Diversity of a different kind
Mohammad, however, said he believed Hongkongers were still excited to support candidates and vote. “I don’t think the new election is less democratic. If you think the system was more democratic before, I don’t think so. There weren’t any ethnic minorities running in a big way like me,” he said.
Of the city’s 18 districts, Yau Tsim Mong is the most ethnically diverse. Almost 9 per cent of residents are ethnic minorities, according to government data.
Jimmy Baljinder, a Yau Tsim Mong South candidate and a fifth-generation Indian in Hong Kong, said he had been campaigning every day – mornings and evenings – in recent weeks. The New People’s Party member was speaking to HKFP before canvassing outside a housing estate in Yau Ma Tei on Thursday evening.
The candidate said he was passionate about increasing employment and education opportunities for ethnic minorities, noting a lack of ethnic minorities in public services such as social work and healthcare.
He said he disagreed with the view that campaigning was meaningless and that parties would mobilise voters to come out for their candidates regardless.
“If that was the case, I would just sit at home doing nothing… [I have been] working very hard on the streets,” Baljinder said.
Baljinder used to be a member of Path of Democracy, a self-proclaimed moderate party founded by Executive Councillor Ronny Tong.
The subdued campaigns ahead of the December race cut a contrast to Hong Kong’s history of colourful election canvassing in years past, when opposition figures were allowed to run.
When asked whether he felt the atmosphere ahead of the coming elections was different to the District Council election in 2019, held amid the months-long anti-extradition protests and unrest, Baljinder – who did not run that year – said there had been “a lot of excitement.”
“Different people came out because they wanted to be elected. The atmosphere was different,” Baljinder said. “I think we have to build back up the atmosphere.”
‘I don’t care’
With two weeks to go until the patriots-only District Council elections, the government has urged residents – especially civil servants – to vote on December 10. Giant billboards across the city, and even the Hong Kong Observatory’s morning weather forecasts, are calling on voters to cast their vote “for a better community.”
At the same time, officials have downplayed the importance of voter turnout, saying the number of voters is determined by a wide range of factors and does not necessarily reflect the value of the new electoral system.
Some residents of Yau Tsim Mong South district that HKFP spoke to said they would not cast their ballot as they did not think their vote would sway the outcome.
“The election is like the government giving you a menu of dishes to choose from, but they’ve already decided,” a man surnamed Cheung said. “In the past, I cared and I paid attention to the candidates. Now, I don’t care.”
A man who gave his last name as Chan told HKFP he felt he did not know much about the candidates. “During previous elections, I received pamphlets in my mailbox. This year I only received one, so I’m not sure who the candidates are and what they stand for,” he said, speaking in Cantonese like all the residents HKFP spoke to.
Others, however, said they would still vote. A Yau Ma Tei resident said after taking a leaflet from a volunteer in Baljinder’s campaign team told HKFP she was glad that the government had overhauled the electoral system. The district councillors elected in 2019 “made a mess,” she said.
The woman, a retired civil servant who declined to share her name, said she thought there was still value in casting a vote.
“I don’t know much [about Baljinder]’s platform yet,” she said. “But I’ll read the leaflet when I get home.”
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