Those battling for 'true democracy' for the past 30 years have not lost heart - despite tough rules on vote for the next chief executive in 2017
JOYCE NG AND KRISTINE KWOK
PUBLISHED : Monday, 15 September, 2014, 6:29am
UPDATED : Monday, 15 September, 2014, 8:01am
Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers protest after Beijing's rejection of demands for a free election in 2017. Photo: Reuters
For Albert Ho Chun-yan, who has spent three decades fighting for universal suffrage, the tough ruling by Beijing on Hong Kong's next chief executive election did not come as any surprise.
"I have never been too optimistic," says Ho, former chairman of the Democratic Party. "Hong Kong's road to democracy is always linked with China. It's destined to be a long, hard fight."
The National People's Congress Standing Committee's decision on August 31 to impose tough rules on the city's first popular vote in 2017 - restricting the number of candidates and ensuring they meet with Beijing's approval - dashed many Hongkongers' hopes for democracy.
The framework, giving a 1,200-member nominating committee the sole power to name candidates, and requiring that more than half the members back the aspirants - is so restrictive it has given the city little leeway to give people a genuine choice of candidates, critics say.
The election reform exercise has virtually collapsed, even before next month's second stage of consultation. Pan-democrats have vowed to boycott it and veto the model.
Beijing blames pan-democrats for failing to negotiate properly, while stressing national security must not be compromised by Hong Kong's political reforms.
However, critics say that the Communist Party's anxiety over its grip on power explains the unwillingness to allow Hong Kong to advance its quest for open elections with full suffrage.
Beijing's fears over its legitimacy could have prompted the hardline response, says Ching Cheong, a veteran journalist who has covered Chinese politics for decades. He has dismissed Beijing's stated worry that Hong Kong must elect a patriot, and prevent the city from become a base for foreign influence.
"It is the Community Party's security, rather than national security, that is at stake," he says.
Yet Beijing loyalist Ip Kwok-him disagrees. "The concern with national security was legitimate because there are many foreign influences present in Hong Kong," says Ip, a lawmaker with the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong. "The Communist Party is indeed the republic," he says, meaning the People's Republic of China. "[It] really has to ensure the top leader of Hong Kong will not create trouble."
Ip says Hong Kong people should appreciate the determination of Beijing to introduce universal suffrage to the city, the first such step in the People's Republic of China. "There's a great deal of trust in Hong Kong. Pan-democrats should think about how to refine the system instead of staying confrontational."
Illustration: Henry WongThe older generation of pan-democrats, such as Ho, backed Beijing's move to resume sovereignty over the city in the 1980s, even as other Hong Kong citizens worried about returning to communist China. This group of pan-democrats wanted a democratic system to serve as a role model for the rest of the nation. The 1989 military crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 only steeled their resolve.
Some activists believed dialogue would move Beijing. That was tried in 2010, when Ho and two other leaders in his party were accused of having a secret meeting with officials at Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong to discuss the party's reform plan for the Legislative Council. Pan-democrats from other parties were unhappy that the Democrats negotiated without them; some called it a "betrayal". In the end, the Democrats' proposal for adding 10 Legco seats, with a reform expanding the voter base of five seats, was passed.
Ho's friend and fellow Democrat, Lee Wing-tat, says the 2010 meeting was a "trial-and-error" lesson for Democrats, who since then have grown more united.
Lee says to rebuild trust with other pan-democrats, since last year he and Ho have held regular meetings with leaders of other democratic parties. They also involved Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a co-founder of the civil disobedience movement Occupy Central.
One of the reasons given for the current election reform deadlock is the "failure" of pan-democrats to properly communicate with Beijing, as pro-Beijing heavyweight Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai referred to it recently.
Indeed, the model laid down by the NPC Standing Committee is almost identical to the Federation of Trade Unions' plan.
Proposals by some moderates, including two groups of scholars and Civic Party lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-wah - all eschewing public nomination - were rejected by Beijing.
Ching says when the Communist Party seized power in 1949, China faced far more hostilities outside of its borders. (The Korean war started the next year and the United States imposed an embargo on China after it intervened in the war). The party was more tolerant of Hong Kong.
The party did not worry that Hong Kong would "become a base of subversion", Ching says. "It had the confidence and ambition to rule the country with widespread popularity. Why should China be more worried than it was in 1949?"
Lee echoes Ching's view, saying the fear about pan-democrats threatening national security was exaggerated. "At the end of the day, we're talking about giving one person, one vote. It is entirely a different thing from previous reforms, which were only minor changes," Lee adds.
Widespread corruption and social problems have tarnished the party's legitimacy, Ching says, and that prompted a tighter control over Hong Kong's governance. For the first time since 1997, the clause of "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong" and "high degree of autonomy" - two principles in Hong Kong's min-constitution, were omitted from Premier Li Keqiang's annual work report this year.
The omission shows a major shift in the approach of President Xi Jinping to Hong Kong compared with his predecessor, Hu Jintao , Ching says.
"At least Hu would appear to honour [Beijing's] promise to Hong Kong, but Xi just wiped out the clauses," he says.
The "promise" Ching refers to lay in a 2007 decision of the NPC Standing Committee. Then it ruled that Hong Kong would not have universal suffrage in the 2012 chief executive election, but would have it in 2017.
In the early days of China's economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong was revered as a crucial part of the nation's efforts to modernise, thanks to the generous amount of investments from the city.
Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a political scientist at City University, says the dynamic between the central government and Hong Kong began to shift in about 2003, when the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome hurt the city's economy. Since then, he says, the city's government has sought Beijing's assistance to support its economy.
Cheng cites the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, a trade deal with the mainland. "Hong Kong is no longer significant in China's modernisation efforts. And the Chinese leadership may well consider Hong Kong as a source of trouble, and that Hong Kong people should be taught to understand the territory's limitations."
Yet Ho says he is not giving up and will take part in the Occupy Central sit-in. "The door leading to talks has been shut," he says. "We can only become more radical. I know there is a faction in Beijing that wants to give Hong Kong genuine democracy, but that this faction lost this time. I won't lose hope."
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1592497/hong-kongs-pan-democrats-face-steep-climb-universal-suffrage
