Protesters carrying yellow umbrellas marched from Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay to the Legislative Council building in Admiralty near the Central business district yesterday June 14 in opposition to Beijing’s handling of and the local government’s submission to the electoral reform package just days before legislators vote on it.
The rally was organised by a coalition of 14 pro-democratic groups calling itself Citizens Against Pseudo-Universal Suffrage Campaign.
Slogans chanted were such as, “say no to fake universal suffrage” as protesters left the traditional rallying point of Victoria Park for an assembly at Admiralty’s Tamar.
Most commentators were confident that the lawmakers will vote down the proposal.
The organisers said 3,500 people took part, well short of their original estimate of 50,000. This may have to do with the recent reverse in public opinion as reflected in opinion polls as people feel more confident that the proposal will be voted down, said coalition representative Sam Yip Kam-lung to the media.
The debate in the Legislative Council starts on June 17 and all 27 lawmakers that make up the pro-democratic camp say they will reject the package, denying the government the two-thirds majority needed for the reform to pass.
There will be nightly protests outside Legco until the vote but no one is speaking about any plan to repeat the road blockades of the 79-day Occupy movement that took place last year.
Sympathisers supporting the reform plan assembled in another area, outside Southorn Playground in Wan Chai, and police kept the two factions apart. Along the route though they traded insults as a couple of dozen supporters of the proposals for the 2017 chief executive election edged near the main body of marchers.
The pro-democracy marchers were called “running dogs of Western imperialism”,
