He was widely portrayed as a wolf because democracy activists contend that he is "a wolf in sheep's clothing," whose sympathies for the Chinese Communist Party may lead him to roll back some of the city's cherished civil liberties - although Mr. Leung has denied that. The Hong Kong government issued a statement Sunday evening saying that it would protect civil liberties. "The Government will uphold the core values of Hong Kong and protect the freedom and rights of the people," the statement said. The chief executive and his team will honor their pledge to hold themselves accountable to the people. They will go to the districts to listen to people's views and aspirations and work together with them to address the deep-rooted problems in a pragmatic manner, improve people's livelihood and promote harmony and stability in society. People streamed out of Victoria Park, where the protest began, and into the march for more than four hours, making it one of the largest political protests in Hong Kong in the last decade - or anywhere in China, for that matter, since large protests are banned on the mainland. The Hong Kong police said that the number of people in the park at the beginning of the march had been 55,000. The unofficial initial estimate from organizers was that as many as 400,000 people had participated in the march, including many who joined along the nearly 2-mile route. Ivan Choy, a Hong Kong politics analyst at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that the crowd's size relative to Hong Kong's population of 7 million would make it harder for Mr. Leung to preserve his political legitimacy. "We have 5 percent of the population asking him to step down and focusing on his integrity," Mr. Choy said. The protest took place after Mr. Hu had already flown out of Hong Kong at midday, following the inauguration of Mr. Leung. Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 after British and Chinese leaders promised considerable autonomy to the city until at least 2047.