Albert Ho

Albert Ho Chun-yan (born 1 December 1951) is a solicitor and politician in Hong Kong.

Ho was born in what was then British Hong Kong on 1 December 1951 in a big family with six children.

His father worked in a shipping company by day and as a translator by night, along with two other jobs that he had.

During his college life, he developed his liberal ideals, got actively involved in student politics and campaigned for Mak Hoi-wah who ran for the Hong Kong University Students' Union against the Maoist nationalists who dominated the student union in the 1970s.

Ho got his Bachelor of Laws with honors in the University of Hong Kong in 1974, and obtained a Postgraduate Certificate in Laws in 1975.

He attended lectures given by Hsu Kwan-san, a Chinese historian who later became a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, whom Ho cited as influence for his political beliefs and Chinese national sentiment.

Ho got admission to practice law in 1977 and was appointed a notary public of the common law in 1988.

He was employed for Messrs. C.Y. Kwan & Co. as a solicitor for nearly 20 years, then left to set up his own law firm, Ho, Tse, Wai & Partners.

His litigation experience varied from banking cases and commercial law to land law and matrimonial disputes, as well as in criminal and medical negligence cases.

Albert Ho worked a number of human rights cases on a pro bono (undertaken voluntarily and without payment) for the pan-democracy camp.

Ho stepped into politics when he was first appointed to the Kowloon City District Board from 1982 to 1983.

In 1985 he co-founded the Hong Kong Affairs Society (HKAS) to participate in the electoral politics during the transition period.

He ran for the Urban Council in Kowloon City West in the 1986 municipal election but was defeated by incumbent Peter Chan Chi-kwan.

In 1989, he co-founded the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China to support the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and was critical of the Beijing government's bloody crackdown.

In April 1990, Ho and other pro-democracy activists co-founded the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK), the first major pro-democracy party in the city, of which he became the founding vice-chairman.

He ran again in the 1991 Urban Council election in Southern District but was again losing to incumbent Joseph Chan Yuet-sut of the conservative Liberal Democratic Federation of Hong Kong.

In 1992, he ran for the by-election in New Territories West as his first attempt to the Legislative Council after incumbent Democrat Ng Ming-yum died of cancer.

He was defeated by conservative rural leader Tang Siu-tong by only four percent of the votes.

The party transformed into today's Democratic Party in 1994 when he became a member of the party's first executive committee.

He was elected to the Regional Council in the municipal elections in 1995, receiving the largest number of votes in the Regional Council.

He ran again in New Territories West in 1995 Legislative Council election, receiving 54 percent of the popular vote.

During his spell as the leader of the HKAS, he demanded a faster pace of democratisation in Hong Kong and the safeguarding of freedom and way of life after the handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China after 1997.

He kept served on the council through 1997 until it was abolished by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa in 2000.

He stepped down from the colonial legislature on 30 June 1997 on the eve of the handover of Hong Kong after the Beijing government dismantled the "through train" agreement of allowing the 1995 elected legislature to transition beyond 1997.

The Democratic Party boycotted the Provisional Legislative Council controlled by Beijing and refused to take part in it.

In November 1997, Ho was nominated by the Democratic Party to run for a seat in the National People's Congress, but excluded from competition when he failed to obtain the minimum number of nominations from the 400-strong Beijing-appointed election conference.

In the first Legislative Council election of the SAR period in 1998, Ho won a seat in the New Territories West with his party colleague Lee Wing-tat.

Ho was a member of the Tuen Mun District Council for Lok Tsui since the 1999 District Council election.

With his strong basis in his strategic district Tuen Mun, he was re-elected in 2000 with one of the three Democratic Party tickets.

Albert Chan who had a strong basis in Tsuen Wan was also elected at the expense of Lee Wing-tat.

Ho was re-elected in 2004.

After the election, he unsuccessfully challenged Rita Fan in the Legco presidential election.

Between 2004 and 2006 Ho was the vice-chairman of the Democratic Party.

On 20 August 2006, Ho was assaulted by three unidentified men using baseball bats and a baton in a McDonald's restaurant in Central, Hong Kong, after he had attended a protest against the government's plan to adopt a Goods and Services Tax.

He suffered injuries to his head, arm and face, including a broken nose.

He was targeted by the radical democrats, including Albert Chan of the People Power in the 2011 District Council election who opposed the Democrats' compromise with the Beijing officials on the 2012 constitutional reform proposals and in the 2015 District Council election by Civic Passion's Cheng Chung-tai.

He is the former chairman (2014–2019) and vice-chair (2019–2021) of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, and former chairman of the Democratic Party from 2006 to 2012.

He is a solicitor and a former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong for District Council (Second) constituency.

He became the third chairman of the Alliance since 2014, succeeding Lee Cheuk-yan.

He kept the seat for 15 years but was defeated in 2015 by pro-Beijing lawyer Junius Ho in 2015 by a narrow margin of 277 votes.