HK ready for election, says chief executive

About 4.47 million registered voters will return 90 lawmakers on Sunday

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is fully prepared for Sunday's Legislative Council election, with many measures in place to promote and facilitate the voting, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday.

Speaking ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting, Lam stressed the importance of the first Legislative Council election after the electoral revamp, saying that the government has mobilized a large number of staff members to ensure the election is conducted smoothly.

"Those improvements are crucial to bring Hong Kong back to the right track of 'one country, two systems', and to ensure that we are in a situation of 'patriots administering Hong Kong' and to help LegCo to return to normalcy," she said.

Lam said the government and many nongovernment entities, including those in business sectors, have done sufficient promotion work to familiarize residents with the candidates and voting arrangements.

Calling it a very positive sign, Lam said she was pleased with the united efforts of society in general to promote the election and appeal to voters to exercise their civic responsibility.

The measures include free public transport on election day and the distribution of about 3 million brochures containing information on candidates in geographical constituencies in communities. Many officials, including the chief secretary, secretary for justice and secretary for security, made promotional videos on Monday, calling on residents to vote on election day.

The new legislators will assume office in January, Lam said, adding that she will personally administer the taking of oaths by legislators.

About 4.47 million people have registered as voters, with ballots to be cast between 8:30 am and 10:30 pm on Sunday. They will return 90 lawmakers: 20 from geographical constituencies, 30 from functional constituencies, and 40 from the Election Committee constituency.

After visiting a mock polling station on Tuesday, Barnabas Fung Wah, chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission, urged voters to pay attention to the location of polling stations.

Fung called on voters not to rush to vote in the first two hours, when he said long queues were expected.

Also on Tuesday, Chief Secretary for Administration John Lee Ka-chiu led a delegation at the third meeting on border reopening with Chinese mainland authorities in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, to hammer out details on quarantine-free cross-border travel, Lam said.

By 9 am on Tuesday, more than 440,000 Hong Kong residents had applied for the Hong Kong health code to prepare for the possible partial reopening of the border by the end of this month, she said, adding that more than 150,000 registered accounts have been activated.

Lam said the limited quota will be allocated to residents with urgent and practical needs, with business needs given priority, and the SAR government will strive to expand the quota.

The health code was launched on Friday to align Hong Kong's contact tracing with that of the mainland in order to facilitate the reopening of the border.

Yu Chenye contributed to this story.