“Regret” must be the strongest emotion now felt by some of the opposition politicians, who participated in the camp’s so-called primary election over the weekend.

The organizers have peddled the maneuver as “a poll” designed to narrow down the number of opposition candidates in the September Legislative Council election in order to maximize their odds of grabbing more than half the seats in the legislature — or the so-called “35-plus”.

But those candidates from traditional opposition parties must have realized by now that they were cheated into playing a game designed to screen them out to pave the way for the radicals, or “localists”, to make it to the legislature. 

The trick is rather simple: By manipulating the “primary election”, those behind the maneuver tried to produce fake popularity for their favored candidates, namely the radicals who have vowed to act collectively against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government after they get into the legislature. 

After the weekend poll, the masterminds behind the scheme are now trying to build up pressure on those candidates who were “not favored” by “voters” in the “primary election”, forcing them to abandon their plans of running in the September election — with “moral persuasion”. 

While it is merely distasteful for those opposition veterans who have been cheated into this game, the maneuver has enraged many fair-minded citizens because it is a blatant attempt to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. By forcing some candidates out of the race, the organizers are trying to influence the election results, thus undermining the fairness of the election.

The schemers of the so-called “35-plus” plan have promoted the idea that the participants would veto the SAR government’s budget after they won 35 or more seats in the legislature — as part of their collective actions to paralyze the government. Now that they have put their plan into action, there is a strong case for an investigation into a possible offense of subversion under Article 22 of the new National Security Law, which states that “a person shall be guilty of an offense if a person seriously interferes in, disrupts, undermines the performance of duties and functions in accordance with the law by the body of central power of the People’s Republic of China or the body of power of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by force or threat of force or other unlawful means”.