The New Territories East by-election early in 2016 was the first time a candidate contesting under a localist banner. Supported by many organisations in the localist camp and boosted by the Mong Kok civil unrest, Hong Kong Indigenous's Edward Leung received 15% of the votes. Despite failure in winning a seat, its better-than-expected results encouraged the localist camp to actively field candidate to contest the general election in September. On 29 February 2016, the day after the by-election, Civic Passion (CP), Proletariat Political Institute (PPI) and Hong Kong Resurgence Order (HKRO) jointly announced they would form an alliance to contest all of the 5 geographical constituencies.
The candidates include:[4]
The ideology of the alliance is mostly based on Chin's "City-State Theory". Instead of striving for independence from China, they advocated a constitutional reform by all citizens through a de facto referendum, in the form of a by-election triggered by one legislator resigning from each of the five geographical constituencies. After the amendment to the Basic Law was accepted by the communist party, the autonomy of Hong Kong would be guaranteed even after the original deadline of 2047.
Of the 5 candidate lists fielded by the alliance, only one was returned to the Legislative Council. Cheng Chung-tai was elected to represent New Territories West with a 9.03% support, while incumbent legislator Wong Yuk-man suffered a narrow defeat of 424 votes to Yau Wai-ching of Youngspiration (ALLinHK). After ending again at the 6th place in the 5-seat Kowloon East constituency, Wong Yeung-tat resigned from the leadership of Civic Passion, to be succeeded by Cheng Chung-tai.[5]
As the movement leader, Wong Yeung-tat conceded defeat and admitted a lack of public support for their constitutional movement. The alliance was dissolved after the 2016 LegCo election, as announced by Chin Wan on 5 September 2016. Proletariat Political Institute would provide political training for the youth. But in early 2017, Civic Passion and Passion Times were separated.