Carrie Lam Becomes First Female Hong Kong Leader

Carrie Lam has been selected to be the fourth Hong Kong Chief Executive, after gaining 777 votes from the 1,194-person committee.

Lam, who is a former Chief Secretary and Deputy to the current Chief Executive CY Leung, will be the first female leader in the city’s history.

The selection was said to have been done amid protests and poor weather by a tiny election committee drawn mostly from Hong Kong’s elite during which a total of 1,163 valid votes were cast.

In Lam’s acceptance speech, she vowed to heal divisions amid demands for more democracy and protests at Beijing’s growing influence.

“Hong Kong, our home, is suffering from quite a serious divisiveness and has accumulated a lot of frustrations. My priority will be to heal the divide.”

According to CNN, pro-democracy members on the committee, around 25% of the total, backed former Financial Secretary John Tsang, while a tiny minority of lawmakers who favor self-determination for Hong Kong, spoiled their ballots in protest at the “small circle election.”

Reforming the current political system was a key demand of the 2014 “Umbrella Movement,” in which tens of thousands of protesters shut down parts of the city for 79 days but ultimately failed to gain any concessions from the government.