Fernando Cheung
Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung is a Hong Kong politician, the vice-chairman of the Labour Party, and a member of the Legislative Council.Career
Cheung worked in the United States from 1988, and became a naturalized United States citizen. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.
He served as the head of the Oakland Chinese Community Council. His paternal grandmother is a native of Peru.
On moving back to Hong Kong in 1996, he became a lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He became the vice-convener of Civil Human Rights Front in 2002, where had developed a close relationship with the pro-democrats. He joined the functional constituency of social welfare of the Legislative Council in June 2004. He defeated Cheung Kwok-chu by a razor-thin 64 votes. After he won the election, he refused to visit Beijing on 30 September 2004 with nine other pro-democratic legislators; choosing to protest on that day for Hong Kong residents instead.
Cheung introduced a motion for the referendum on universal suffrage for the 2007 chief executive elections in Hong Kong. The Chinese government had warned Hong Kong's pro-democracy legislators not to hold a referendum on universal suffrage for 2007/08. After three members of the democratic camp said they would not vote for his motion at the Legislative Council's constitutional affairs panel meeting, he said, “Perhaps the three councillors feared that a referendum was legally binding in nature and hence their reluctance to support my motion. I believe every democrat lawmaker still accepts the 2007-08 target. Voting against my motion does not mean they have abandoned hope of universal suffrage.”
