By Elaine Ng and Rivers Zhang<\/b><\/p>\n
Chan Chak-to, who stood as an openly pro-Hong Kong independence candidate in last year\u2019s Legislative Council Election, says there\u2019s no conflict between his pro-independence stance and his being in the Election Committee.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old engineer doesn\u2019t think that in seeking a seat on the 1194-member committee that will pick Hong Kong\u2019s next chief executive, he is acting against his political beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to get as much airtime as possible to explain our beliefs,\u201d Chan says. \u201cBeing part of the Committee allows us to spread our influence and prevents it from being dominated by pan-democratic and pro-establishment voices.\u201d<\/p>\n
In last September\u2019s Legislative Council election, Chan won 12,854 votes in Kowloon East, 30,000 votes short of getting elected. He announced his support for independence after his nomination was approved, despite his refusal to sign a form confirming he agreed Hong Kong was \u201can inalienable part\u201d of China.<\/p>\n
He has brushed off the loss and moved on. He joined the 30 member IT Vision bloc to contest the Election Committee elections and the group bagged all 30 seats in the subsector.<\/p>\n
The group spans the non-establishment political spectrum, with pan-democrat members such as the Democratic Party\u2019s Sin Chung-Kai, the Civic Party\u2019s Chan Yu-ming, and Francis Fong Po-kiu, the president of Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, as well as young radicals like Chan.<\/p>\n
Sitting around the table with pan-democrats, Chan acknowledges the need to compromise some of his values. \u201cOur collaboration goes rather smoothly,\u201d he says. \u201cSome pan-democrats have political views even more radical than mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chan says there is mutual respect between IT Vision members despite their different political orientations. \u201cIt is actually a good thing to work together, because people would understand localists don\u2019t always mess things up, but can be constructive.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked to comment on the chief executive contenders\u2019 manifestos, Chan thinks retired judge Woo Kwok-hing\u2019s stands out from the other three. He says Woo has \u2018thought it through\u2019 and looked at the big issues, such as how to bypass Beijing\u2019s \u2018831 decision\u2019.<\/p>\n
By Monday morning, Chan\u2019s nomination form was one of the 180 handed in by Woo as he crossed the required threshold to enter the race. All of his nominations came from pro-democracy Election Committee members, including eight from IT Vision. Another 21 members from the group nominated John Tsang.<\/p>\n
Chan says that for him, \u201cThe decision of who to nominate should be based on the contenders’ platforms instead of their public image.\u201d<\/p>\n
As to who he will vote for on March 26th, Chan says it is too early to say as that will depend on candidates\u2019 performances in the election debate and circumstances at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a [majority of say] 800 votes [from the establishment camp] go to a single candidate, then I will probably cast a blank vote. If my vote is vital to the result, then it\u2019s not impossible that I will vote for John Tsang half reluctantly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Edited by Stanley Lam and Chloe Kwan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Localist Chan Chak-to seeks to collaborate with other members of Election Committee\u2019s IT Subsector <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[587],"tags":[591,594,590,593,205,589,592,327,588],"class_list":["post-10156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ce-election-2017","tag-591","tag-chan-chak-to","tag-chief-executive-election","tag-election-committee","tag-hong-kong","tag-independence","tag-it","tag-localism","tag-localist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10159,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156\/revisions\/10159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}