Cyd Ho - The 2004 Legco Election

The 2004 Legco Election

The 2004 Legislative Council election returned candidates to office based on a party-list proportional representation system. There were four viable tickets running for election for the Hong Kong Island constituency. The left was represented by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong's ticket, consisting of Ma Lik and Choy So-yuk; and the centrist ticket was represented by Rita Fan.

The pan-democratic camp decided, after strategising, to put up two tickets for election: the Democratic Party's ticket with Martin Lee and Yeung Sum, and Audrey Eu and Cyd Ho's ticket. The thinking was that the remainder vote on both these tickets was sufficient in order to return all four candidates to office, providing that voters in the pan-democratic camp were coordinated effectively. Cyd Ho was defeated by a slim margin (815 out of a total of about 350,000, or 0.23%) to her nearest DAB rival, Choy So-yuk.

Originally, the slogan "1+1=4" was taken as a way to strategically allocate votes between the two pan-democratic camp tickets, namely that a spouse from each couple would vote for each ticket. Conspiracy theorists claim that, during the final days leading up to the election, the Democratic Party believed it could secure a seat for their third candidate, Lai Chi-Keung. The Democratic Party hence allegedly requested all supporters of the pan-democratic camp in the Hong Kong Island geographical constituency to vote for them, claiming that Audrey Eu's star presence on the other ticket was strong enough to skew votes to the other ticket.

In the end, Lai ended up a few hundred votes short of Cyd Ho, costing them both the chance for a seat. This ultimately benefited Cyd Ho's DAB rival Choy So-yuk. A number of disgruntled voters of the pan-democratic camp demanded that then-DP Chairman Yeung Sum and Founding Chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming both step down in consequence.