You are to have no other gods as a substitute for me. — Exodus 20:3
China, which decided in June 2020 that it owned Hong Kong, is enforcing its own atheistic version of the Ten Commandments. This flies in the face of a city which has long valued economic freedom and which experienced a spiritual revival during the daily mass street protests in 2019 before being silenced by brute communist force.
Thus, facing a lineup of candidates who are loyalists to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), voters in Hong Kong chose to stay at home for the city's district council election on Sunday.
According to the Electoral Affairs Committee, the turnout ended up at 27.54%. A total of 1.19 million voters took part out of the 4.3 million who were eligible.
In the previous district council election, held in November 2019, the turnout rate was 71.23%. That was the last election held in Hong Kong before Beijing implemented its national security law which essentially banned any opposition to the CCP.
The previous lowest turnout was 35.8% in 1999.
"It can be seen that everyone has begun to feel that the election has no meaning," said Lemon Wong, one of the few remaining pro-democracy activists still involved in Hong Kong politics. "Even pro-establishment supporters are asking themselves why they need to vote because it's all the same."
Hong Kong's leader John Lee, a CCP loyalist, said after casting his vote: "It is the last piece of the puzzle for us to implement the principles of patriots governing Hong Kong." He added that the 2019 election had been used to sabotage governance and endanger national security.
All candidates in Sunday's elections were required to undergo national security background checks and secure nominations from two pro-communist government committees. The remaining pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong failed to meet those thresholds.
More than 10,000 police were dispatched by the communist government to watch over the city's polling placed.
Three members of the "League of Social Democrats" were among those followed and arrested just before they planned to protest against what they described as a "birdcage election" and a "big leap backwards" for electoral and democratic rights.
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