Hong Kong Island (constituency)

Overview

The constituency covers all the four districts on the Hong Kong Island, namely, Central and Western, Eastern, Southern and Wan Chai.

Background

The constituency was formed since the 1998 legislative election, replacing a number of single-member constituencies in 1995. These were Island West and Island East in the 1991 election with dual-seat constituency dual vote system and Island East, Island West, Island Central, and Island South in the 1995 election. From 1985 to 1991, the seats were elected by the electoral colleges composed of the members of the district boards and Urban Council.

Return Members

Below are all the members since the creation of the Hong Kong Island constituency. The number of seats allocated to Hong Kong Island has been increased from 4 to 7 between 1998 and 2012 due to the enlargement.

History

The constituency was set up in 1998 election when the largest remainder method (with Hare quota) of the proportional representative electoral system was introduced, replacing four single-member constituencies of the 1995 election. 4, 5, 6, and 7 members were returned from this constituency in the 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2012 elections respectively. No change of boundary had been made throughout since 1998.

2000s

In 2004, the population in this constituency was ?. Out of those who were eligible to register as voters (permanent residents who are over 18 of age), ? registered. ? or ?% of registered voters voted in the election, with 379,913 valid votes.

The Hong Kong legislative election on 12 September 2004 returned six candidates to office based on a party list proportional representation system, with the seats assigned according to the largest remainder method. The pro-Beijing camp returned two candidates, and pro-democracy camps three, with the remainder filled by the independent Rita Fan.

Six lists or tickets took part in the election, with the pro-Beijing DAB filling Ma Lik, Choy So Yuk and four other candidates on one ticket, and the pro-democracy camp filled two tickets, one consisted of Martin Lee, Yeung Sum and Lai Chi Keung of the Democratic Party, and the other consisted of Audrey Eu and Cyd Ho, both ran as independents. Other candidates included Tsang Kin Shing, also belonged to the pro-democracy camp, who ran with two other candidates on his ticket without cooperating with the rest of the camp; and Kelvin Wong, an independent who declared his occupation as insurance agent.

Rita Fan, the President (i.e. Speaker) of the Legislative Council and a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, joined the election with her own one-candidate ticket. She attracted support mainly from the middle and upper class voters from the sandwich of Hong Kong's pro-Beijing vs. pro-democracy political spectrum, but was also backed strategically by the pro-Beijing camp.

The election returned Lee, Yeung, Ma, Eu, Fan and Choy to the Council.

The two mainstream tickets of the pro-democracy camp intended to translate their support into four seats, with the slogan "1+1=4", provided that their supporters would have cast their votes evenly to the two tickets. Pre-election polls showed, nevertheless, that the Eu-Ho ticket had far more supporters, causing the Democratic Party to request all supporters of the camp to vote instead for their ticket just two weeks before the election.

It turned out that the Democratic Party drew too many votes from the Eu-Ho ticket, causing Cyd Ho defeat by DAB's Choy So Yuk, by a slim margin of 815 votes (or 0.23% of all valid votes). Should the Democratic Party drew around 1900 more votes from the Eu-Ho ticket, the third-rank candidate on their list would have defeated Choy.

When the results were announced in the morning of the following day, Martin Lee said before cameras "I'd rather lose with dignity than win like this", on the "unexpected" defeat of Cyd Ho.

1991 Constituencies

Dual-seat constituency dual vote system was used with two seats to be filled in each constituency.