{"id":827954,"date":"2025-02-18T12:12:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/18\/jimmy-lai-admits-to-pushing-for-unofficial-hong-kong-legco-primary\/"},"modified":"2025-02-18T12:12:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:12:41","slug":"jimmy-lai-admits-to-pushing-for-unofficial-hong-kong-legco-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/18\/jimmy-lai-admits-to-pushing-for-unofficial-hong-kong-legco-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Lai admits to pushing for unofficial Hong Kong Legco \u2018primary\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Former Hong Kong media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying<\/span><\/a> has admitted to pushing for an unofficial legislative \u201cprimary\u201d election to be held five years ago, with his efforts extending to obtaining a quote for vote-counting software and advising on the best timing to hold the poll.<\/p>\n

Lai said on Wednesday he was not involved in the poll\u2019s organisation, but conceded that he \u201cdid not tell the truth\u201d when he previously told his marathon trial<\/span><\/a> he was \u201cnot conscious\u201d of a plan for the election to be held in the hope of securing a controlling majority for opposition politicians in the Legislative Council.<\/p>\n

The founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily<\/span><\/a> tabloid newspaper agreed he had asked traditional opposition leaders to keep him informed about the unofficial poll and pushed organisers to speed up preparations.<\/p>\n

Lai also said he had obtained a quote for an electronic voting system developed by a European tech company and had been prepared to spend US$80,000 on the software. But the idea was rejected by former law professor Benny Tai Yiu-ting<\/span><\/a>, the architect of the unofficial poll.<\/p>\n

Over 610,000 voters cast their ballots<\/span><\/a> in the July 2020 primary, but the government postponed the official Legco election by a year, citing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Gaylene Latson
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Hong Kong media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying has admitted to pushing for an unofficial legislative \u201cprimary\u201d election to be held five years ago, with his efforts extending to obtaining a quote for vote-counting software and advising on the best timing to hold the poll. Lai said on Wednesday he was not involved in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4207,1397],"tags":[5835,13042],"class_list":{"0":"post-827954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-admits","8":"category-jimmy","9":"tag-admits","10":"tag-jimmy"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}