Good morning.
High Tide is an hour later than usual today, but I am technically on a summer-long sabbatical and as hard as I try, Cyril won’t free me from this strange room in the basement of an undisclosed building and has me chained to a laptop and a life-sized cardboard cutout of Hatsune Miku.
Anyway, onto the election results.
On Today’s Tide:
Politics | Who could the winner be!? The Chief Executive Election Results ARE IN!!
COVID-19 | The new Yuen Long cluster is growing.
Events
Behind the paywall:
Mother’s Day | Having a socially distanced blast with the family.
Protests | Pro-democracy group protests the election.
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The results are in…
Politics
After a suspenseful (this is completely subjective and maybe a bit sarcastic) election day, John Lee has become the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong. Check out our poll below where we asked our followers on Twitter to guess who won the election.
It took only 23 minutes to count the 1,428 ballots that were cast in the election, with the results announced at 12:28 PM. There were a total of four unmarked ballots, rendering them invalid by law.
Votes cast: 1,428
Votes in favour of Lee: 1,416
Votes against Lee: 8
Unmarked votes: 4
Poll lasted 2.5 hours in the morning
Turnout rate: 97.74%
Check out this HKFP article for different reactions to the election results. His election has received words of support from local business groups (like the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce) as well as criticism from the European Union.
But there were others, such as some folks having dim sum in Mong Kok, who had an entirely different reaction to John Lee’s win. Here’s a brief summary of an interaction HKFP had with two groups at a restaurant:
HKFP: Do you know who the one person running in the Chief Executive election is?
Dim Sum Eater: What’s his name again? Lee Ka-chiu, right?
— Not a direct quote
John Lee has hit the ground running with a temporary office set up for him and his new team of over two dozen staff members.
The Yuen Long cluster grows
COVID-19
A new cluster that began from a suspected asymptomatic spreader has grown, with four more customers of the restaurant testing positive for COVID-19. Now a total of eight customers from the restaurant who were there at similar times have been confirmed with the virus.
Coronavirus in Hong Kong
New cases: 266 (25 imported)
112 detected by PCR tests
154 detected by RATs
Total cases: 1,193,954
Total deaths: 9,133
Compulsory testing notices were released for 40 specified places.
Hong Kong has recorded an increase in foreign domestic workers arriving from the Philippines and Indonesia by the thousands since the ease of travel restrictions.
Events and deals
Support Harbour Times, our friends and partners by attending these events! Let everyone know who sent you by tagging @harbourtimes.
Watch The Open Couple live!
Event description: “In this farce about sexual politics in marriage, a man persuades his suicidal wife that an open marriage is politically correct and embarks on dalliances with younger women, to her dismay and fury. After deciding to be on her own, the tables are turned when she confesses to a new man, Nobel prize nominated professor and inspired singer-songwriter, it is the husband who becomes suicidal.”
Shoutout to The Open Couple’s director and High Tide subscriber Ryan King for sharing the event!
When: 11-14 May at 8 p.m.
Where: HKRep Black Box, 8F, Sheung Wan Civic Centre, 345 Queen’s Rd Central, Sheung Wan
Price: $250
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