Activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law will apply to contest Hong Kong’s legislative election in September, after they won in a preliminary poll held by the pro-democracy camp.

Wong will aim to join the race in Kowloon East, while Law is eyeing a seat on Hong Kong Island. The pair on Wednesday cleared the camp’s primaries, which also yielded several fresh faces who won in the city’s district council election last year and are now setting their sights on the general election of the Legislative Council.

The government’s election screening process is the next hurdle for these aspiring candidates, as Wong was banned by election officials from running in the November 2019 district council election. Law was disqualified by the courts from his Legislative Council seat in 2017 after he modified his oath in the swearing-in ceremony the previous year.

Broader concerns are rife that the government will use a new national security law to block the participation of pro-democracy candidates en masse. The new law, rubber-stamped by China’s legislature in late May, is expected to come into force by the end of June.

The pro-democracy camp is aiming to capture a majority in the Hong Kong legislature by taking more than 35 seats in September. The camp won 29 seats in the last election, organised in 2016, but it now occupies only 23 seats, having lost lawmakers to the government’s court challenge of their improper oaths made while swearing in.

The camp’s political fortunes appeared to have reversed in the November district council election, in which pan-democrats achieved a landslide victory by winning control of 17 out of the 18 councils.

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