Albert Ho

Early life and education

Ho was born in what was then British Hong Kong on 1 December 1951 in a big family with six children. His father worked in a shipping company by day and as a translator by night, along with two other jobs that he had. Ho earned his Bachelor of Laws with honors from the University of Hong Kong in 1974. He went on to obtain his postgraduate Certificate in Laws the following year.

He attended lectures given by Hsu Kwan-san, a Chinese historian who later became a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, whom Ho cited his political belief and Chinese national sentiment were influenced by. During his college life, he developed his liberal ideals and actively involved in student politics and campaigned for Mak Hoi-wah who ran for the Hong Kong University Students' Union against the Maoist nationalists who dominated the student union in the 1970s.

Legal and early political career

Ho was admitted as a solicitor in July 1977 and appointed a notary public in 1988. He worked for Messrs. C.Y. Kwan & Co. as a solicitor for almost 20 years before departing to set up his own law firm, Ho, Tse, Wai & Partners. His litigation experience ranges from cases related to banking and commercial law to land law and matrimonial disputes, and also in criminal and medical negligence cases. He has done a number of human rights cases on a pro-bono basis for the pan-democracy camp.

Ho stepped into politics when he was first appointed to the Kowloon City District Board from 1982 to 1983. In 1985 he co-founded the Hong Kong Affairs Society (HKAS) to participate in the electoral politics during the transition period. During his spell as the leader of the HKAS, he demanded the faster pace of democratisation in Hong Kong and safeguarding the freedom and lifestyles after the handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China after 1997. In 1989, he co-founded the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China to support the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and critical of the Beijing government's bloody crackdown. He became the third chairman of the alliance since 2014, succeeding Lee Cheuk-yan.

He ran for the Urban Council in Kowloon City West in the 1986 municipal election but was defeated by incumbent Peter Chan Chi-kwan. He ran again in the 1991 Urban Council election in Southern District but was again lost to incumbent Joseph Chan Yuet-sut of the conservative Liberal Democratic Federation of Hong Kong. He was elected to the Regional Council in the municipal elections in 1995, winning the largest number of votes in Regional Council. He kept served on the council through 1997 until it was abolished by then Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa in 2000.

He had also been member of the Tuen Mun District Council for Lok Tsui since the 1999 District Council election. He had been targeted by the radical democrats, including Albert Chan of the People Power in the 2011 District Council election who opposed Democrats' compromise with the Beijing officials on the 2012 constitutional reform proposals and in the 2015 District Council election by Civic Passion's Cheng Chung-tai. He kept the seat for 15 years by was defeated in 2015 by pro-Beijing lawyer Junius Ho in 2015 by a narrow margin of 277 votes.

Legislative Councillor

In April 1990, Ho and other pro-democracy activists co-founded the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK), the first major pro-democracy party in the city, in which he became the founding vice chairman. The party transformed into today's Democratic Party in 1994 where he was the member of the party's first executive committee. In 1992, he ran for the by-election in New Territories West as his first attempt to the Legislative Council after incumbent Democrat Ng Ming-yam died of cancer. He was defeated by conservative rural leader Tang Siu-tong by only four percent of the votes. He ran again in New Territories West in 1995 Legislative Council election, winning 54 percent of the popular vote.

He stepped down from the colonial legislature on 30 June 1997 on the eve of the handover of Hong Kong after the Beijing government dismantled the "through train" agreement of allowing the 1995 elected legislature to transition beyond 1997. The Democratic Party boycotted the Provisional Legislative Council controlled by Beijing and refused to take part in it. In November 1997, Ho was nominated by the Democratic Party to stand for a seat in the National People's Congress. He was eliminated from the first round of competition after failing to obtain the minimum number of nominations from the 400-member, Beijing-appointed election conference.

In the first Legislative Council election of the SAR period in 1998, Ho won a seat in the New Territories West with his party colleague Lee Wing-tat. With his strong basis in his strategic district Tuen Mun, he was re-elected in 2000 with one of the three Democratic Party tickets. Albert Chan who had strong basis in Tsuen Wan was also elected on the expense of Lee Wing-tat. Ho was re-elected in 2004. After the election, he unsuccessfully challenged Rita Fan in the Legco presidential election.

On 20 August 2006, Ho was assaulted by three unidentified men using baseball bats and a baton in a McDonald's restaurant in Central, Hong Kong, after he had attended a protest against the government's plan to adopt a Goods and Services Tax. He suffered injuries to his head, arm and face, including a broken nose. Democratic Party chairman Lee Wing-tat claimed that the attack was related to a lawsuit Albert Ho was working on, and had nothing to do with politics. Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang condemned the attack, declaring that the attackers would be pursued to the "ends of the earth". Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee also condemned it.

Democratic Party Chairman

Between 2004 and 2006 he was the vice chairman of the Democratic Party. In December 2006, he was elected as party chairman in the leadership election, defeating Chan King-ming of the reformist faction. Under his spell, the party absorbed Emily Lau's The Frontier in 2008.

In June 2010, he led the Democratic Party delegation to the Liaison Office to negotiate the electoral reform package with the representatives of the Beijing government, for the first time since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The Beijing government eventually accepted the Democratic Party's modified proposal to allow five new directly elected District Council (Second) seats. The compromise sparked extreme discontent among the radical democrats and created a major unrest among the pan-democracy camp. He was challenged by radical democrat legislator Albert Chan in his Lok Tsui constituency in the following 2011 District Council election and barely retained his seat.

In the 2012 Legislative Council election, Albert Ho ran in the newly created District Council (Second) constituency and was elected with 228,840 votes. However, his party continued being attacks from the radical democrats and received the worst results in history, retaining only six seats. Ho resigned as party chairman right after the election results came out and was taken over by Emily Lau as acting chairwoman.

2012 Chief Executive bid

Albert Ho announced in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong on 4 October 2011 that he would challenge the 2012 Chief Executive election which was elected by 1200-member Election Committee controlled by Beijing. With the pan democrats securing an estimated 205 votes, Albert Ho took part in a pan-democrat primary election on 8 January 2012 against Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood lawmaker Frederick Fung and won. Ho ran against the two pro-Beijing candidates, ex-convenor of the Executive Council Leung Chun-ying and former Chief Secretary Henry Tang. Since being widely conceived of having no chance winning the Beijing-controlled election, Ho's popularity trailed behind Leung and Tang over the election. Out of the 1,132 EC votes, Albert Ho came third with only 76. Leung Chun-ying was declared duly elected by the Returning Officer.

Snowden incident

In 2013, Ho grabbed international headlines after it was revealed that he had assisted Edward Snowden during the latter's stay in Hong Kong.

2014 Hong Kong protests

In October 2014, during pro-democracy protests that began on 26 September, Albert Ho said he was prepared to take a bullet if demonstrations turn violent. He did not support violence in the cause of democracy, but was willing to make a "sacrifice" on behalf of young people "because the future belongs to them."