After half a day’s continued acrimonious debate, the Government proposal (as modified by the Democratic Party) on Legco electoral reform in 2012 has been approved 46:12. (Tsang Yok-sing [HKI; DAB], as Legco President, did not vote; Leung Kwok-hung [NTE; LSD] was absent, having been expelled from the chamber for interrupting Minister for Mainland and Constitutional Affairs Stephen Lam.)
So, what exactly, has been passed?
Chief Executive election, 2012
The Electoral Committee has been increased from 800 to a whopping 1200 people (a decrease from the 1600 proposed in 2005), with no change in the relative proportions taken up by Beijing politicians and special interest groups. The threshold for nomination has increased proportionately from 100 to 150 electors - rendering it effectively impossible for any pan-Democrat to be nominated.
Legislative Council election, 2012
The Legislative Council will expand to 70 seats. 5 of the 10 new seats will be elected by geographical constituency. The remaining 5 seats are open to elected District Councillors (nominated by other elected District Councillors) and voted on by all registered electors who are not currently registered with any other functional constituency.
There is otherwise no change to the existing functional constituencies - in other words, the privileged classes can continue to wield their multitude of functional constituency votes acquired through directorships, companies and other organisations.
The risks of this proposal are clear. Candidates for the new functional constituency seats are nominated by District Councillors - who are at liberty to engage in political horse-trading in deciding whom to nominate. Worse, the cloaking of any functional constituency seats in a veneer of democracy legitimises the entire functional constituency system, in which many candidates run unopposed, representing small groups with entrenched vested interests. Many Royalist legislators, speaking in support of the reform, argued that some benevolent functional constituency legislators exist. This, however, does nothing to falsify the fact that functional constituency legislators who put their narrow electoral base above the common weal are often impossible to campaign against, let alone vote out.
And in return for supporting this watered-down proposal, what have the Democratic Party - and other “moderate” pan-Democrats - obtained in return?
The Central Government has given no undertaking on election of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage in 2017, or on election of Legco by universal suffrage in 2020. Nor has there been any mention of a roadmap. Put more bluntly, the Democratic Party has obtained nothing tangible in return for these minimal concessions by the SAR and Central Governments. This appears to be movitated by a mindset of defeatist, “This is as good as you’re going to get”.
As columnist Poon Siu-to warned in yesterday’s Ming Pao (link in Chinese), the Communist Party of China has an abysmal track record on living up to its promises on civil liberties and democracy. To wit:
Other than [the inherent demerits of the proposal], my reason for opposition is simple: the history of the Chinese Communist Party tells me that it rarely lives up to its political promises to its people, and to the weak. Back in the 1940s - when the Communists were still engaged in the Civil War - its organs the Liberation Daily and Xinhua Daily wrote innumerable articles in praise of liberal democracy. On American Independence Day and on the birthdays of American Presidents Jefferson and Lincoln, both papers would urge the introduction of American-style elections in China and debunk the myth that the Chinese people were of unsuitable calibre for democratic elections. In late 1945, Mao Zedong attended CPC-KMT peace talks in Chongqing. In answering a written question from a Reuters correspondent, he made clear that the CPC pursued a democratic New China in which all levels of Government were elected by universal suffrage. Before the PRC’s establishment, the CPC undertook to form a coalition government with other parties; in the “Common Memorandum” it made clear that representatives at all levels would be elected by universal suffrage. Democracy, human rights and civil liberties likewise made an appearance in the Constitution.
But after the CPC took power, these solemn political promises either went sour or were entirely denied. For decades, the State has gone the other way to defend its one-Party hegemony.
As Poon (and, in the debate against Donald Tsang, Audrey Eu) observed, in an interview with the People’s Daily in 1993, Lu Ping, then head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, clearly stated that the development of democracy in Hong Kong after 2007 was a matter for Hong Kong and one in which the Central Government would not interfere. This (as Poon also points out) evidently did not deter the NPCSC from “interpreting” the Basic Law to deny universal suffrage in 2007 and 2008, and to limit the scope for electoral reform in 2012.
More recently, the Central Government’s liaison office in Western has taken an increasingly proactive role, particularly in connection with the current set of reform proposals. This has led to widespread concerns that Hong Kong now has two governments - as shown when a secondary school student asked Financial Secretary John Tsang whether Hong Kong was ruled from Western. (Ming Pao, 2 June 2010)
With the existence of a Regency in Western, one might wonder whatever happened to “a high degree of autonomy”.
And what of the Democratic Party’s role in all this? Perhaps Palmerston may be allowed a slight digression - into the global calamity that is the credit crunch.
In exploring the origins of the credit crisis, radio programme This American Life referred to a “NINA Loan” - a “No Income, No Assets” loan. In short, anyone was eligible for such a loan - without the need to prove income, or assets. So how is this relevant?
The Democratic Party, in engaging with the Liaison Office, has invested its electorate’s political capital. This, in itself, is unobjectionable - provided that it obtains a sound return on its investment. However, faced with the Central Government - an entity with a notoriously poor political credit rating - it has backed down from its initial position to the current state of affairs without obtaining so much as an undertaking from the Central Government as security. What the Democratic Party has done, in other words, is to grant the Central Government the political equivalent of a NINA loan.
The difference is that, once the Democratic Party exhausts its political capital, there will be nobody left to bail it out.
