John Lee aims to get 500 nominations: Tam Yiu-chung

A key member of John Lee’s campaign team for his bid to become Chief Executive said they hope to – and are confident they can – get one-third of election committee members to nominate him to join the race.

Tam Yiu-chung, who is Hong Kong’s sole delegate to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, was speaking ahead of an online press conference on Saturday, in which the former chief secretary was set to formally announce his bid for the SAR’s top job.

Tam said the team hopes Lee can gain around 500 nominations from the 1,500-strong election committee, and eventually win the CE race with a lot of votes.

“I found out that many of my friends sent the message to me to support Mr Lee. Many of them feel that Mr Lee is the appropriate person as the Chief Executive. So I’m confident,” he said.

Tam however refused to divulge where Lee’s press conference will be staged on Saturday, saying he is concerned that many reporters will gather and violate Covid rules.

Asked if John Lee can really reach the public if his campaign activities will mostly be held online, Tam said the former minister is being especially careful as he was in charge of infection-control work before.

“Actually he wanted to contact with the people, but we got the pandemic problem, so we need to avoid the pandemic and make [sure] the election is safe to the public. He [doesn’t] want to breach the law, so we will choose the Internet to do the press [conference],” he said.

“He wants to present his platform and let the people know and support him.”

Tam added that the former chief secretary and his team are listening to different views and preparing his platform.