Hong Kong's legislative council elections, originally scheduled to be held in three weeks' time, was postponed due to "health concerns". The Chinese People's Congress then declared that the election would be delayed by not less than one year (No, it is not a typo) and the legislators currently serving would stay on until the next election. Do they think the current pandemic would remain severe for one whole year? (The current spike seems to be easing.) If the outbreak is so severe, workers and students should not commute unless it is necessary for the entire year as well. One would be lying (or totally naive) to state that the decision is not politically motivated.
With the election delayed by at least one year, the election may be postponed indefinitely. So the government can choose to hold the election any time they wish after one year is past. It is likely that, after over 600,000 showed up for the democratic camp's primary poll last month, the government likely concluded that there is a good chance that the pro-democrats would win more than half the seats in the legislature, something that they and their masters in Beijing find unacceptable. Sure, there are places (Britain, for example) where the government can set election dates as it pleases, but elections (in the developed world, at least) have to be held before a fixed date. By indefinitely postponing the election, the government is in effect saying to the world that Hong Kong has become a third world city. (Perhaps the government should revise its slogan to "Asia's Third World City".)
There are currently 4 vacant seats in the legislature right now (including 1 in my district). The local authorities organizing elections claimed earlier that there is insufficient time before the general election for by-elections to be held. Now that the general election is postponed, the reasoning is no longer valid. (Of course, officials would use the same reasoning for postponing the general election to defend their decision not to hold by-elections.) Since students would not be attending class in-person at the start of the school year, schools can be used as polling stations and strict sanitary measures can be implemented to keep voters safe from infection. (One month has passed since the primary poll and there is not yet a single infection relating to the poll.) The only reason the vacant seats are not filled is that officials cannot justify postponing the general election if by-elections were indeed held.
The pro-Beijing camp defended postponing the election by claiming that voters living in mainland China would not be able to return to the city in time due to quarantine had the election be held as scheduled. Had it occurred to them that such voters, many of which are claimed to be retired, can travel to Hong Kong 3 weeks in advance? The pro-Beijing figures also claimed that many such voters do not have an address in Hong Kong. This leads to another question — in which district would they vote in? Can they choose in which district they "live" on election day? This sounds like a voting-stuffing ploy.
The nomination of 4 incumbent pro-democracy legislators, along with a few winners of the primary poll, in the cancelled elections were voided by election officials, claiming that their allegiance to the city is not genuine. Many pro-Beijing legislators supported the decision. The 4 can keep their seats in the upcoming special session. To show that they support the officials' decision, the pro-Beijing camp should introduce a motion to expel the 4 at the start of the session. Election officials may watch the legislators' actions between now and when the election is called closely to find reasons to disqualify them from running. In addition, many winners of the primary poll are currently charged with offences relating to the past year's protests and/or newly minted national security law. Perhaps the government has set such a long delay so that they would be convicted and serve long jail sentences, thus automatically barring them from running the election without getting the election officers' hands dirty.
The pro-Beijing camp has proposed to set up polling stations within Guangdong province to serve those living there. If they want to allow voters living outside the city to vote, they should also set up polling stations where there is a large presence of Hong Kongers to show that they are not biased. (Of course they would not do such a thing.) If polling stations were set up in mainland China, candidates have to send campaign material to voters living there (good luck trying to find anything sent by opposition candidates in the mail), televised debates, held in Hong Kong, would have to be broadcasted in the mainland (as if the broadcast would not be censored), candidates and monitors would have to be present to monitor the voting and counting process (can pro-democrats even enter the mainland without being arrested).
The Hong Kong government is laying its intention — cheat if its supporters is likely to lose an election (and void the results if they manage to lose) — for all to see and it could not care less if the city's standings to the rest of the world is in tatters as a result, as long as it maintains control.