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All 90 members of the seventeenth legislative council of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Area (HKSAR) took the oath of allegiance on Monday officiated by Chief Executive Carrie Lam. This follows the electoral overhaul by Beijing in HKSAR.
Notably, two lawmakers retook their oath after they missed a few words in it and three legislators chose to take their oaths in Mandarin instead of Cantonese, a language spoken locally. Lingnan University Scholar Chow Man-Kong was the first to take his oath in Mandarin, reported Hong Kong Free Press. This comes at a time when Hong Kong faces a crackdown on many media outlets. Staff members of many of the media outlets are detained by the state authorities. Hong Kong is seeing such incidents since China passed the controversial National Security Law. Michael Luk from the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Union and Third Side's Tik Chi-yuen was asked by the Secretary-General of the Secretariat of LegCo Kenneth Chan to repeat their oaths. They both claim to be of the non-pro-establishment camp. They were asked to repeat the oath as Luk left out the word "councillor" from his oath, while Tik left out "Hong Kong" from "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China" in their oaths. Another LegCo (Legislative Council) councillor elect, Gary Chan from DAB(Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong) did not raise his right hand while taking the oath of allegiance, reported Hong Kong Free Press. The ceremony took place at the Chamber of the LegCo Complex. The lawmakers, one by one, began to take an oath to uphold the Basic Law of the HKSAR and swear allegiance to the HKSAR after jointly singing the national anthem of China together with HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the oath administrator, reported Xinhua. Last month, Hong Kong's first race to Pro-Beijing or "patriots-only" legislative began. The changes slashed the number of directly contested seats and required candidates to be screened by government officials. Moreover, Hong Kong "patriots only" elections witnessed a record low voter turnout as pro-government candidates swept into the expanded legislature. Around 1.3 million voters cast ballots for a 30.2 per cent voter turnout - 5.6 percentage points less than the last historic low in the 1995 legislative election under British colonial rule, Hong Kong Free Press reported. Many people boycotted the elections and had shown their apathy for the adulterated and undemocratic way of conducting the elections. Democracy in Hong Kong has gone for a toss post the electoral overhaul and has included pro-Beijing or "patriots only" people in HKSAR legislator. Forty seats were selected by a committee stacked with Beijing loyalists, while the remaining 30 were filled by professional and business sectors such as finance and engineering, known as functional constituencies, reported Al Jazeera. The latest results show that almost all of the seats have been taken by pro-Beijing and pro-establishment candidates. The US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand expressed grave concerns over the erosion of democratic elements of the Special Administrative Region's electoral system. (ANI)
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