Cyd Ho
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Cyd Ho Sau Lan (traditional Chinese: 何秀蘭; simplified Chinese: 何秀兰; in Cantonese pronounced [hɔ̏sɐ̄ʊlȁn]; Pinyin: Hé Xiùlán, born 1954) was a full-time legislative councillor of Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo), elected from the geographical constituency of New Territories East from 1998 to 2000 and Hong Kong Island from 2000 to 2004. She is a founding member of The Frontier, a local pro-democracy political group and since 2006 founding councillor of the World Future Council. She is well-known for promoting universal suffrage, rule of law, human rights, and equal opportunity, as well as advancement in the interests of women, homosexuals and other minority groups. She will run for LegCo again in the Hong Kong Island by-election, 2007.
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[edit] Background
Ho studied at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She worked in the textile trading industry from 1979 to 1995.
[edit] Career
In 1991, she helped Emily Lau Wai Hing during the election campaign, the first open direct election of the Legislative Council (LegCo) in colonial Hong Kong. In 1993, she founded the "United Ants"; with other pro-democracy political activisits. In 1995, she worked as an assistant to Margaret Ng Ngoi Yee, a lawmaker representing the legal profession in the LegCo.
In 1996, along with other political activists, she founded The Frontier.
She was elected a legislative councillor for the geographical constituency of New Territories East in 1998 in the first LegCo election since the transition of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the UK back to China. She was re-elected in the constituency of Hong Kong Island in 2000. She chaired bills committees such as the 2004 Education (Revised) Bill and the 2004 Examination Authority Bill, and was vice-chair of the panel on environmental affairs. She chaired the Sub-committee under the Home Affair Panel to study questions of discrimination based on sexual orientation between 2000 and 2004.
She was elected as a District Council member of the Central and Western district via the Kwun Lung (觀龍) constituency in November, 2003, beating veteran Ip Kwok Him of the DAB. She also supported members of other pro-democracy political groups such as Civic Act-up, which were also contesting seats in the Wanchai district council.
In 2004, she, together with James To Kun Sun, Frederick Fung Kin Kee, Wong Sing Chi, Mak Kwok Fung, attempted to cross the border and meet Beijing officials at Shenzhen, to request for a faster pace of democratisation in Hong Kong.
[edit] 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 strategizing, 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. The reasons for this were attributed to two possible factors: either the lack of proper planning of vote allocated among the pro-democratic camp candidates, or an outright betrayal by the Democratic Party who were ostensible political allies.
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 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 the then-DP Chairman Yeung Sum and Founding Chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming step down as a result.
However, some others pointed out that Ho's support for legalizing gay marriage during the election campaign was a fatal blow, because her speech angered and alienated a significant number of voters.
[edit] Post-election
Besides staying as a key member of her political party the Frontier until 2006, she currently hosts her own radio programmes on two local radio stations: on RTHK every Tuesday evening (1700-2000 HKT), and on PRHK every Wednesday night (2200-2300 HKT).
In 2006, she quit the Frontier and became the chairperson of Human Rights Monitor in Hong Kong and the co-convener of Project Civil Referendum, a scheme to pilot and promote the idea of holding a referendum in Hong Kong.
In 2007, due to the death of Ma Lik vacating a Hong Kong Island Legislative Council seat, she originally decided to run in the by-election, but later she rejected. Also, she gave up renewing the seat of the district council in order to prepare her participation in 2008 legislative council election.
