Suzanne PepperToday, 11:26 AM
Yes, it was a referendum on last year’s Occupy Central street sit-ins for democratic elections because pro-Beijing partisans did everything they possibly could to make it so. The November 22 Election Day special issue of Ta Kung Pao led off with a banner headline: “Use Your Vote: Send the Trouble-Makers Packing.”
Loyalists were finally acknowledging what they’ve been doing unannounced all along. The lowly District Councils are not just about providing social services for neighborhoods in need. The councils have been transformed into the base of Hong Kong’s political power grid and they are now weighted heavily in Beijing’s favor.
Turnout was a record high for the typically low-interest district elections. Of Hong Kong’s 3.69 million registered voters, only 3.12 million could participate because many constituencies were uncontested … 68 in all, virtually all occupied by pro-Beijing/pro-establishment contenders. Among those 3.12 million, only 1.46 million actually voted. But at 47%, the turnout was the highest ever for a District Councils election.
What must have been the motivation? Perhaps a poll will tell us, but then again perhaps not. In years past Hong Kongers’ favorite answer to the question about why they voted was a bland: “because it’s my civic duty.” Better to pencil in some preliminary conclusions. The results look like the after-effects of Occupy … not just anti- but pro- as well and the tension between them, hyped by the loyalist media campaign.
Last year, anti-Occupy forces had threatened to register a million new voters and bury what pro-Beijing loyalists love to write off as “the opposition.” The threat didn’t quite materialize, although not for want of trying (Nov. 10 post ). ( … mobilizing for victory …). Nor were pan-democrats buried. Instead, they held their own and offshoots sprang up from the Occupy movement in a way that its opponents didn’t foresee. But then neither did anyone else.
During the election campaign, the pro-democracy camp as a whole ran scared. Instead of standing tall over what they did last year, everyone was on the defensive, intimidated by the anti-Occupy blitz. Even newcomer candidates from the Occupy generation … who defied conventional wisdom and refused to join pan-democrats’ candidate coordination effort … were no exception. If people ask us about Occupy we’ll explain, they would say, otherwise we won’t make an issue of it.
In the end, they didn’t need to. The battle was joined because loyalists made it the central focus of their election campaign. Sympathizers came out to defend … just like they did on that first day last year when the public rushed out onto the streets to protect protesting students against the police tear gas barrage.
The upside for pan-democrats is that thanks to Occupy and its opponents, voters are finally focusing on political realities. Hong Kong’s District Councils are part of the larger political struggle against the advance of mainland political ways. If anyone wants to stand guard against that advance, they need to begin on the first rung of the ladder … instead of writing off these councils as democracy activists have always been inclined to do.
SUCCESS OF ANTI-OCCUPY STRATEGEMS
The downside of Sunday’s election for pan-dems was the relentless professional campaign waged by their opponents. The only thing they miscalculated was the upsurge of voters willing to stand with Occupy.
Pro-democracy parties actually won 30 more seats than in 2011 and pro-establishment parties won one seat less. The main pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) ran fewer candidates and won fewer seats. But the difference was made up by other like-minded parties. The total seat count is still weighted overwhelmingly in their favor against pan-dems: 298 seats to 120. Only 13 seats were won by independents who couldn’t be identified as being on one side or the other.
In terms of individual votes, those for the pro-establishment parties were up by considerably more than those for pan-dems. The totals for the two sides were: 783.427pro-establishment; 539,500 pan-dem (China Daily , Nov. 24).
As for the councils themselves, pro-establishment parties have retained their majorities on all but one. With the abolition of appointed seats, pan-dems had their hearts set on regaining the majority they used to hold on the suburban New Territories Kwai Tsing District Council. In 2011 they won a bare majority, but the government-appointed councilors reversed the balance.
Determined not to cede ground, the DAB targeted Kwai Tsing, the campaign there was a chaotic mix of insinuation and innuendo, and the result: 19 pro-establishment seats to only 10 for pan-dems. Had they not proclaimed their goal beforehand, they might not have alerted the DAB campaign to the district’s easy pickings.
In contrast, no one thought much about the Shatin District Council, also in the New Territories, since it has long been the turf of DAB ally Civil Force. To everyone’s surprise, and despite the new Civil Force alliance with Regina Ip’s New People’s Party, pan-dems made major gains. So Shatin has become the new Kwai Tsing with pan-dems securing exactly half the seats on the Shatin council: 19 to 19.
But woe to those who find themselves in the crosshairs of the pro-Beijing campaign machine because it’s probably no longer possible for any democrat to survive that kind of targeted attention. And Beijing’s attention is now focused squarely on seeing to it that its forces win five more seats in the next Legislative Council election (Nov. 17 post). … the candidates. That would give them the two-thirds super-majority they need to pass Beijing’s electoral reform design over the objections of pan-dems who vetoed the design last June.
SUPER-SEAT FIASCO
Where better to look for those five seats than the five so-called “super-seats” now reserved for District Councilors on the Legislative Council? As a result, pan-dems greatest loss last Sunday was their failure to hold or gain big-name representation on the lower-level councils. Territory-wide name brands are needed because of those conjoined seats. Although only District Councilors can nominate and be nominated for the five Legco seats, they are ultimately elected by all voters from a single territory-wide constituency. A sixth District Council representative in the Legislative Council is elected only by the District Councilors themselves.
The five super-seat addition is the compromise design that then Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan agreed to in 2010 when he was negotiating a reform proposal on behalf of the entire democratic camp. How could he know one of those seats would lead to his downfall five years later?
Democrats won three of the five seats in the 2012 Legco election. Albert Ho had long represented the Lok Tsui constituency on the New Territories’ Tuen Mun District Council and he won one of the super-seats. Hard to remember now that in 2010-11 … when he was being pilloried by fellow democrats for agreeing to the compromise … he could do no wrong in loyalist eyes. This year, after he had supported Occupy, he became the target of almost daily diatribes and mocking cartoons in the pro-Beijing press. That they meant to bring him down was clear when a well-connected lawyer was tapped to run against him (Nov. 17 post).
Still, Albert Ho might have survived but fighting in the spotlight as he was, other pan-dems rushed to exploit the attention. The loudest were the “anti-mainland, Hong Kong-first” Civic Passion activists eager for another chance to settle scores old and new. They never explained why they thought it was more important to bring down Albert Ho than worry about Beijing winning five more Legco seats, but they did succeed in what they set out to do.
Results: loyalist lawyer Junius Ho Kwan-yiu,2,013 votes; Albert Ho, Democratic Party,1,736 votes; Cheng Chung-tai, Civic Passion391 votes; Cheung Wing-wai, independent democrat, 25 votes; Shum Kam-tim, pro-establishment, 94 votes; Yuen Wai-chung, democrat, 99 votes.
But at least Albert Ho’s opponents were for real. Civic Passion is always looking for opportunities to attack what they regard as back-sliding dithering democrats. Frederick Fung Kin-kee’s loss was skillfully contrived. Tapped to run against him was a young Federation of Trade Unions candidate with the entire DAB/FTU campaign machine behind her. Yet Fung, too, might have survived … had someone or something not induced a disgraced ex-member of his own Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL) party to come out of political retirement and contest the constituency seat as well.
Eric Wong Chung-ki did what he was presumably lured to do and threw the election to the FTU. Results: Joephy Chan Wing-yan, FTU/DAB, 2,531 votes; Frederick Fung, ADPL,2,432 votes; Eric Wong, 215 votes.
Days before the election, name lists of all the pro-democracy candidates who had been arrested last year during the Occupy street blockades appeared in pro-Beijing papers along with photographs to prove they were there (Wen Wei Po, Nov. 11, 17). Albert Ho and Frederick Fung were named. So was Civic Party legislator Kenneth Chan Ka-lok … who joined the race in hopes of providing another big-name super-seat candidate. He lost as well.
As a further result, pan-democrats’ safest super-seat prospects have been taken out. Only four remain including incumbent James To Kun-sun who for some reason was spared the full treatment. Perhaps because he has the least prospect of running or winning again.
Of the four, the strongest possibility is Gary Fan Kwok-wai of the Neo-Democrats. This is a Democratic Party spin-off whose members quit after Albert Ho’s 2010 compromise. Neo-Dems are new-style ballot-box radicals, unequivocally pro-Occupy, and a bright spot for pan-dems in Sunday’s election. They won 15 of the 16 New Territories seats they contested.
In contrast, the pro-establishment list of prospective candidates for the super-seats has grown both longer and stronger. From next to nothing in 2012, they can now boast a total of 10 incumbent Legco members who have won District Council seats and can be considered viable super-seat candidates.
PRO-OCCUPY SUCCESS STORIES
The big surprise was victory for so many young and not-so-young newcomer candidates … alth
http://chinaelectionsblog.net/hkfocus/?p=1459
