Suzanne Pepper

           Strangely enough given the make-up of the Election Committee tasked with endorsing the appointment of  Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive, candidates pledged to support a pro-democracy candidate actually did better in the December 11^th Election Committee Sub-sector Election than those who had declared for the two leading pro-establishment candidates.    During the first week of December, the highest preference rating received by the main pro-democracy candidate, Albert Ho Chun-yan (He Junren 何俊 仁) of the Democratic Party, was 6 %.  This was a Hong Kong University poll that gave the two establishment contenders, Leung Chun-ying and Henry Tang, 34.7% and 18%, respectively.  Albert Ho also has no chance of victory on Election Day, March 25, whereas Tang was regarded as the front-runner even though Leung was topping all the candidate popularity polls (Jan. 4, 2012 post).   The approximate number of pledged candidates who won:   50 for CY Leung; 203 for Henry Tang; 205 for a democrat.

THE COMMITTEE

         To sort out these contradictions, it is necessary to focus on the convoluted process of anointing Beijing’s choice for Chief Executive, and to do that it is necessary to focus on the composition of the 1,200-member committee.  Unfortunately, in order to understand the Election Committee it is also necessary to think in terms of the 28 Functional Constituencies that elect half the Legislative Council.  These are based on occupational categories and this electorate is a mix of corporate representatives and employees.  Altogether, they include 200,000+ voters.  To form the Election Committee, the 28 Functional Constituencies are rearranged a bit to become 32 of its sub-sectors.  These are divided into three main sectors, plus a fourth filled with political representatives.  Each sector has 300 members:

EC Sectors                                            No. of Members

First:  Business, industry                       300

Second:  Professions                                300

Third:  Labor, etc.                                     300 

Fourth:  Political                                        300

        All the economic heavy weights are concentrated in Sector One.  Professional categories are represented in Sector Two.    Sector Three is a mix of “grassroots” and others:  labor unions, farmers, fishermen, social welfare, representatives of all the main religions, sports, performing arts, publishing.   Sector Four contains political representatives of many kinds including all 60 Legislative Councilors and a selection of district councilors.   Pro-Beijing loyalists account for almost a third of this sector.  They are represented by Hong Kong’s 36 delegates to the National People’s Congress and 55 of Hong Kong’s representatives on the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

DEMOCRATS TRY THEIR LUCK

        After much argument among all the parties and groups, most democrats decided to support a candidate for Chief Executive, as they did five years ago, even though the committee is so weighted with conservatives and loyalists that everyone knows a democrat cannot win.  One opinion poll asked about the chances and respondents all replied “zero.”  Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho volunteered months ago to be the candidate (for reasons of the DP’s own, to be sure) but most others agreed that his candidacy could promote their common cause by providing another opportunity for public debate. 

          Some disagreed.  DP vice-chair Emily Lau has maintained her long-held view that to participate in such a “small circle” election is to acknowledge its legitimacy.  The new Labor Party, led by veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan, holds the same view and the party’s two Legislative Councilors will abstain from the March 25 vote.  But among pan-democrats, only the most radical groups, People Power and League of Social Democrats, are actively agitating against participation for that reason (and also doubtless because they are still smarting from their failed attempt via last November’s District Councils election to punish the Albert Ho’s party for its sins).

          Even if everyone was on board, however, sponsoring a pro-democracy Chief Executive candidate in an environment deliberately designed to discourage such a project  is not easy.   The basic bar is the need for 150 Election Committee members willing to serve as nominators.  So the first step was to find a sufficient number of people, among the 200,000+ electorate, willing to stand as pro-democracy candidates for a place on the 1,200-member committee.  Among all the 38 sub-sector constituencies (including the six in Sector Four), only a few contain people likely to vote for Election Committee candidates who are willing to pledge, openly in advance, to nominate a pro-democracy Chief Executive candidate.

          Leading Democratic Party member Dr. Law Chi-kwong inadvertently illustrated the problem a month after the sub-sector election when an e-mail surfaced that he sent last summer.  He was supposed to have been mobilizing candidates for the social welfare sub-sector but instead warned his friends about the “inconvenience” they were likely to encounter if they won and did not support Beijing favorite Henry Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Jan. 11, 2012).  Law was then working with Tang on a charity project and his friends did not run.

           The places to look for such potential supporters are well-known since they correspond to the few Functional Constituencies that usually vote for pro-democracy Legislative Council candidates.  Those who declared themselves ahead of the December 11^th Election Committee election were concentrated mainly in Sector Two and Sector Three sub-sectors:  accounting, architecture, education, engineering, higher education, information technology, legal, medical, health services, social welfare. 

            Pan-democrats concentrated on these sub-sectors, reminding friends and colleagues to meet all the voter registration and nomination deadlines.  As the latter neared in November, campaign workers began beating the bushes urging more potential candidates to step forward after head-counters came up short of the 150 needed to guarantee one Chief Executive nomination.  Charles Mok of Professional Commons, a Civic Party ally, and the DP’s Yeung Sum were lead coordinators of this pre-election politicking.

            Most democratic candidates announced themselves as members of slates or group tickets, reflecting another peculiarity of this election.  Every individual voter among the 200,000+ could vote for as many candidates as there were seats allocated on the Election Committee to his/her sub-sector.  It was not required but for those wishing to exercise their right in full, remembering so many candidates could be a problem since only their names (no photos allowed) were printed randomly on ballot papers minus any distinguishing marks or reference to partisan affiliations.  All voters were advised to bring along their own “sample ballot” crib sheets for reference.  Some slates helped out by printing their own in the form of paid newspaper advertisements.   With its 60 seats, the social welfare sub-sector presented the greatest challenge, which was nothing compared to the job of vote-counting afterward.   

RESULTS

         The turnout  –  27.5% of 237,000 registered voters  –  was about the same as usual.  Altogether 766 seats in 24 sub-sectors were contested by 1,300 candidates.   But to everyone’s surprise including their own, given the lackluster turnout, democrats could count 205 of their candidates among those elected to sit on the committee.  The margin above 150 was more than enough for safety’s sake  –   in case some change their minds about signing  for a democrat when nomination time comes in February.  All were from the anticipated sub-sectors.  

           Pan-democrats’ success was one surprise.   Another was how well the results reflected all the reports from unattributed Beijing and Hong Kong establishment “sources” about Henry Tang being their preferred candidate, despite CY Leung’s popularity.  He tallied only about 50 backers compared to Tang’s 203.  The sub-sectors most solidly in Tang’s camp also indicate the extent of his support here:   commerce, industry, textiles/garments, wholesale/retail, tourism, catering, performing arts.  Leung’s greatest strength was in his own architectural/surveying constituency, plus import/export, religion, and a scattering of others.  Most committee members have not yet declared their preferences.     

           Ironically, pan-democrats were trying to play the “small circle” game they deplore and accomplished what they needed to do.   In contrast, Leung has had no Election Committee experience and it showed.  He seems to have ignored the tedious task of mobilizing advance support within the sub-sector constituencies.  Instead, he focused on the new popular acceptability criterion and campaigned by speaking out with more to say on current issues than any of the other candidates.  Two others, Rita Fan and Regina Ip, have recently dropped out of the race.  Still, he may have won some new friends.  There has been talk among democrats on the Election Committee about whether they should “lend” their surplus support (above the 150 signatures Albert Ho needs) to Leung so that he, too, can meet the 150-signature threshold.   Some among the younger generation want to help Leung who, unlike Henry Tang, at least represents the possibility of something different.

A PRIMARY ELECTION ALL THEIR OWN

          Not so fast, say their elders who remember Leung in the 1990s (Jan. 4 post).  Best wait before jumping on that band wagon until we hear what he has to say about democratic institution-building and the Basic Law’s Article 23 mandate for national political security legislation.  They are  setting the stage for Albert Ho and his main declared reason for joining the race.  Without our open challenge, he says, candidates Tang and Leung will continue to ignore us and carry on as they have so far with their non-committal answers to our political questions.

           Albert Ho is sounding like he, too, has learned some lessons.   Given all the flak aimed at him and his party during the past two years  –  for refusing to participate in the 2010 universal suffrage referendum campaign; for compromising on the 2010 political reform package; and now for participating in the Election Committee exercise  –   Albert Ho concluded that he needed something more substantial than 205 small-circle backers to underpin his candidacy.   He and his party therefore decided, with the help of some younger activists, to hold a virtual referendum in the form of a primary election.

          Besides helping to legitimize his nomination, there were many anticipated benefits.  The general public could participate and if numbers were great enough the establishment candidates would feel obliged to accept his challenge for open debate.  The exercise could also serve as a dress rehearsal for the next Chief Executive election in 2017 when Beijing has promised that everyone might be allowed to vote.  Specifically, the promoters are trying to establish some precedents and procedures ahead of 2017.  The aim is to have alternatives already tried and tested in order to prevent the current Election Committee from becoming the sole nominator of  pre-determined candidates, which is the direction Beijing’s promise now seems to be taking.

          Perhaps recalling its own lonely struggle with the 2010 referendum campaign, the Civic Party decided against putting forward a candidate to compete with Albert Ho.  But veteran moderate democrat Frederick Fung Kin-kee (Feng Jianji 馮檢基 ) stepped forward to save the day and round out the experiment, which was actually quite ambitious.  It entailed:  two televised debates between Ho and Fung on January 3 and 7; an opinion poll commissioned by the sponsors but conducted by Hong Kong University’s Public Opinion Program between January 3 and 6, asking respondents which candidate they preferred; and finally, an online primary election allowing all Hong Kong residents to chose one or the other on January 8. 

       If nothing else, the debates illustrated another almost-forgotten cleavage within the pro-democracy camp itself  –   between Frederick Fung’s extreme moderation and that of the Democratic Party.  In this line-up, Albert Ho played the radical with his dramatic declaration of “war” against the “hegemony” of Hong Kong’s mega-property developers who are blamed for pushing housing prices out of middle class reach.  Fung said such talk would only provoke more social conflict and hatred of the rich.  He advocated instead a policy of encouraging smaller developers to enter the market and a fund to promote innovative industries.  On political reform, too, Albert Ho was far more forceful, calling for abolition of the Legislative Council’s Functional Constituency seats and for resolving the question of Article 23 legislation.

         HKU’s opinion poll was the least successful part of the exercise.  Among 1,000 respondents, 271 preferred Albert Ho and 181 Frederick Fung, but over half abstained and there were no follow-up questions that might have explained why.  The January 8^th primary, on the other hand, exceeded expectations with its improvised cardboard-box polling booths, open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and 70 computers set up all around town outside the busiest subway stations.  Voters had to punch in their Hong Kong ID card numbers to prove they were residents and not voting twice.  But despite some radical heckling, 34,000 people turned out while only 20,000 had been expected.  The weather obliged and everything went off without too many glitches thanks to Charles Mok and his IT friends.  The result:  22,148 votes for Albert Ho; 10,791 votes for Frederick Fung; 993 abstentions.

           Despite some smirking and simmering from the usual pro-Beijing sources, pan-democrats have so far done what they set out to do with a minimum of conflict and controversy and no major blasts from on high.    But the campaign is only half over.  Next comes February and then March.  Will 150 Election Committee members actually sign on the doted line to confirm Ho’s candidacy?  If they do, will the establishment candidates respond as he hopes and accept his challenge for a public debate?   And if they do, will he stand by his January debating points or equivocate, as he did before, in the face of official intransigence and party pressures to minimize  “inconvenience.” 

          Between now and then, however, the spotlight will refocus on Leung Chun-ying.  Of all the awkward choices that have to be made, his will be the most difficult as he tries to find his way clear of the obstacles his unconventional campaign has created.  Leung’s greatest danger now is the interest among democrats and the feelers his own campaign sent out last month for their help in meeting the nomination threshold.  If he openly courts them, his standing with Beijing and the local establishment is probably doomed.  But the potential for support from democrats will be nipped in the bud should he feel the need to regain his loyalist-conservative footing by provoking them.  It follows that if Leung Chun-ying can maneuver through this minefield with his Hong Kong candidacy and Beijing credentials intact, then maybe he really is the right man for the top job.

suzpepper@gmail.com

           With the November District Councils election now an unhappy memory for Hong Kong democrats, attention has re-focused on the next (decidedly un-democratic) phase of its long drawn out 2011/12 election cycle.   Here there are no jokes about “small benefits and favors” or snakes and cakes for grassroots voters since the key players at this level are not grassroots and benefits don’t need to be discussed.    In polite formal discourse the people who count are known as stake-holders, otherwise referred to as the power elite, tycoons, social notables, and so on.  Some count more than others, of course, but a representative sample is currently engaged in the convoluted process of confirming Beijing’s choice for Chief Executive.  He will succeed Donald Tsang, whose term expires next June, and serve for five years.

          Initially, defenders of this exercise liked to say that at least it was more open than before 1997, when the colonial governor was appointed by British government officials in London and designated local dignitaries lined up to greet him on arrival at Queen’s Pier.   Two decades and more of agitation for universal suffrage elections, formalized in Article 45 of the Basic Law, has resulted in Beijing’s promise that the selection procedures designed during the pre-1997 transition to Chinese rule will end with the coming 2012-17 Chief Executive term.  According to this design, a representative sample of the post-colonial establishment is elected to form an Election Committee that then confirms Beijing’s preferred candidate (July 23, 2010 post).  But everyone who is currently commenting on the matter assumes that nominations for post-2017 universal suffrage elections will derive from their 1997-2017 predecessor, which means “the committee” is likely to cast a long shadow.

        It currently works like so.  (1) The 28 Functional Constituencies, with their combined total electorate of 200,000+ voters, are not only responsible for filling half the legislature’s seats (April 16, 2010 post).  The same constituencies also elect most of the Chief Executive Election Committee.  This has just been increased from 800 to 1,200 members but its composition is the same as before.  (2)  The committee then nominates candidates who need the endorsement signatures of 150 members to qualify, although candidates need not themselves be committee members.  In theory, anyone can be nominated who is a Chinese citizen, has lived in Hong Kong continuously for 20 years, and is over 40 years of age.  (3)  The winning candidate is then endorsed by all the committee’s members, on a one-person-one-vote basis, with 601 votes needed to confirm victory. 

          Hong Kong is now midway through this process.  The Election Committee election was held on December 11.   The signed nomination papers must be submitted between February 14 and 29.  Pan-democrats will select their candidate  –  there are two main contenders  –  after conducting opinion polls in early January, and holding an on-line primary election scheduled for this coming Sunday (January 8).  Hong Kong University opinion pollster Robert Chung is making plans for an on-line mock election he wants to hold on March 23.   Election Day itself is March 25.

THE IRRESISTABLE LURE OF ELECTIONEERING

       From their perspective, Beijing officials are right to be wary of elections because they can never be absolutely sure their “unitary” way of governing will prevail.  If the opportunity is there, no matter how limited, someone is sure to take advantage  –  like the many independent candidates who are creating headaches for local authorities during the mainland’s current cycle of grassroots people’s congress elections.  Under Hong Kong’s temporary one-country two-systems governing arrangement, where the unitary principle does not yet apply, opportunities are much greater.  In 2007, the newly formed Civic Party wanted to introduce itself and use the Chief Executive selection process as a platform for public debate, even though the Election Committee is stacked with conservatives making it impossible for a democratic candidate to win.  Beijing was unhappy with this challenge to its pre-selected candidate, the incumbent Donald Tsang.  And Beijing was even more unhappy with Civic Party candidate Alan Leong’s debating points  –  so much so that a press campaign was launched to discredit his most daring proposals.

         This year the contest is even more provocative and not just because Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho has decided to follow in Alan Leong’s footsteps.  Beijing’s real dilemma has been created by one of its own closest allies who decided at least two years ago that he wanted to be Chief Executive after all.  Meanwhile, Beijing had been quietly grooming another candidate while apparently trying to institutionalize a line of succession that might be used to prepare safe candidates in anticipation of the promised 2017 “universal suffrage” election.   But then things grew even more complicated. 

           Independent opinion polls showed the public, and young people especially, liked the wild card candidate much better than the other.  In fact, they liked several others better.  What’s more, the polls began registering this result around the same time last summer that Beijing’s top official responsible for Hong Kong affairs, Wang Guangya, added a new criterion for prospective leaders.  Besides being patriotic and capable, said Wang, the candidate must be “acceptable” to the people of Hong Kong in the way that elected leaders are accepted by voters (Wen Wei Po, July 12, 2011).  So after some initial hesitation, Beijing has decided to let the campaign run its course and make known a final choice “later.”

CANDIDATE LEUNG

           The mystery man is Leung Chun-ying (Liang Zhenying 梁振英) or CY for short, who has been a leading member of Beijing’s Hong Kong governing establishment since it’s foundations were laid in the mid-1980s.  Then in his early 30s and without any of the right family connections  –  whether British colonial or pro-Beijing patriotic  –    Leung entered at the top, occupying a prominent perch on the first of the building blocks Beijing constructed here.   He then moved on from one to the next in an unbroken upward trajectory.

        This unusual resume has naturally inspired many rumors.   Leung must be a member of Hong Kong’s underground communist party branch …  or maybe he was at least inducted into the Communist Youth League when he began applying his newly-minted status as a chartered surveyor to the new demands for cross-border expertise in the late 1970s.  On occasion he has denied such rumors outright, which suggests that he is not a party member.  But mostly he has evaded the questions, which is the practice of those everyone assumes must surely be.

         Leung Chun-ying’s parents were among the thousands of mainland migrants who fled China’s communist revolution in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  But unlike the majority of Hong Kong’s migrant population, this family came from the North, and his father was recruited into the police force as were many men from Shandong province following British colonial policing practice.  Born in Hong Kong in 1954, Leung grew up in the Hollywood Road police compound where the family home was a standard miniscule government-issue apartment.  His path upward began when he won a scholarship that allowed him to attend an elite secondary school located nearby. From there he went to Hong Kong Polytechnic and from there to Britain where he earned a degree in surveying from Bristol Polytechnic. 

           Returning to Hong Kong in 1977, he arrived back at just the right time to benefit from the new cross-border demand for expertise and capital that followed China’s post-1978 decision to learn the ways of the capitalist West including the privatization of land use.  Leung’s profession as a land surveyor was made to order for the new era and property development on both sides of the border would soon make him a millionaire many times over.  But besides wealth he also earned, for his advice and services in the 1980s, the gratitude of many mainland officials.  These included Shanghai major, Zhu Rongji, who would move on to become China’s Premier in the late 1990s.

         Meanwhile, back in Hong Kong Beijing was left with the difficult task of putting together a transition team and welcomed anyone willing to join the new order at a time when many were not.    In 1985, Leung was appointed to the 180-member Basic Law Consultative Committee, elected to its standing committee, and later named secretary-general.  The BLCC’s task was to canvass Hong Kong views for use by the Basic Law Drafting Committee.  Its Hong Kong members worked with Beijing to write the mini-constitution that was to govern Hong Kong for the 1997-2047 transition to full mainland rule.

          Inspired by events in Tiananmen Square and the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991, London then decided to hasten the snail-paced political reform anticipated by the Basic Law.   In return, Beijing decided to begin dismantling all such reform initiatives immediately, as they were being introduced by the last British governor, Christopher Patten.  A 70-member Preliminary Working Committee was formed with a mix of Hong Kong and mainland members to oversee the task. 

             Leung earned the enmity of democracy activists at this time, between 1993 and 1997, as a blunt uncompromising implementer of Beijing’s dismantling project.  He acquired this reputation for his work:  as Hong Kong convener of the PWC’s political sub-group; as a vice-chairman of the 150-member Preparatory Committee created in 1996 to form the new incoming administration; as a member of the Provisional Legislative Council that replaced the last colonial council and formalized the dismantling process by approving  all the necessary laws soon after July 1, 1997; and then as a member of the first cabinet or Executive Council where he was given special responsibility for housing policy by Tung Chee-hwa, the first post-1997 Chief Executive.  Reportedly at Beijing’s behest, Leung was made convener or leader of the Executive Council in 1999, a position he retained until a few months ago.

         His local supporters had proposed Leung in 1996 for the post of Chief Executive, but he declined saying he did not want to be either Hong Kong’s first or second Chief Executive.  His name was raised again beginning in 1999 when Tung, a pro-Beijing businessman who proved an ineffective leader, seemed headed for early retirement.  Better a second term for Tung Chee-hwa than Leung Chun-ying, said democrats at the time.  But again Leung declined and by the time Tung was finally removed, mid-way through his second term, Beijing had hit upon a new solution:  tapping talent from within the old colonial establishment.   Donald Tsang, a career civil servant and at the time Chief Secretary or second in command of the local government, was the man who succeeded Tung in 2005. 

           Anxious to keep the political atmosphere as calm as possible, and concerned about the 2007 promise to allow a “universal suffrage” election in 2017,  friends of  Beijing began canvassing local opinion leaders in mid-2010 for suggestions as to which 2012 candidate would be most likely to win a second term by universal suffrage public acclamation in 2017.    He has not yet said why he wants the job he forcefully declined twice before but by mid-2010 Leung had let opinion leaders know that he now thought he was the man for the job.

          In July 2010, one of those leaders, Allen Lee, entertained listeners at the Hong Kong Club with an hour-long soliloquy on the state of political play in Hong Kong.  Lee founded the pro-business Liberal Party and is now Hong Kong’s most talkative retired politician.  He spoke at length about Beijing’s search for the ideal thru-to-2017 candidate and also about CY Leung’s meticulous efforts to befriend every likely member of the 2012 Election Committee.  But Lee also mentioned the new acceptability criterion that his mainland contacts realized would be necessary even for an elected-by-acclamation candidate.  And therein lays the problem for the man Beijing reportedly favors. 

CANDIDATE TANG

          Henry Tang Ying-yen (Tang Yingnian  唐英年) has a more conventional Hong Kong-elite resume and he had already been promoted to Donald Tsang’s old post as Chief Secretary in preparation for the final step up.  Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Tang is the grandson of a patriotic Shanghai capitalist and son of a Hong Kong textile magnate who acquired the highest of Beijing connections.  Young Henry was educated in the U.S., returned to inherit the family business, and was among the pioneers of Hong Kong-mainland joint ventures.

       His political career began when, in 1991 at the age of 39, he was among the last batch of appointed Legislative Councilors.  He then joined Allen Lee’s Liberal Party, and became an elected legislator via one of Governor Patten’s new-style expanded functional constituencies in 1995.  As Chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, he nevertheless represented most of the business community in opposing Patten’s reform initiatives.  Hong Kong tycoons have always rejected the idea of political reform and now they had a new excuse:  the governor had infuriated Beijing.  “A confrontational and antagonistic approach is suicidal,” wrote Tang in 1996 (South China Morning Post, May 22).

          He joined the Beijing-led pre-1997 preparations, was selected to sit on the Provisional Legislative Council, and became one of Tung Chee-hwa’s first Executive Council appointees.  But unlike CY Leung, Tang moved on to join Tung’s new ministerial system after it was decided that policy bureaus should be headed by political appointees instead of civil servants.  Tang was appointed Financial Secretary in 2003 and Chief Secretary in 2007.

THE OPINION POLLS

           If Hong Kong pollsters had devoted half as much attention to the District Councils election, pan-democrats might have had more warning of what was to come.  But especially after Beijing officials added the new criterion of popular acceptability, interest has focused on the top prize.  In June last year, a Hong Kong University poll commissioned by the South China Morning Post placed CY Leung last among several potential candidates.  Asked who they would vote for if they could, only 8% said Leung; 10% said Tang.  But by October, the responses were Leung 29%; Tang 14% (SCMP, Oct. 17).  By late November, they were Leung, 47%; Tang 23.8%.  Among young people in their 20s, Leung’s support was 62% to Tang’s 20.6% (SCMP, Dec. 8).  Anyone but Henry Tang, they say.  A Baptist University poll in early December found 30% for Leung; 17% for Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 8).  Another by the Chinese University found 42% for Leung; 28% for Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 12).

           Nor are Beijing officials alone in their dilemma.  The older generation of pro-democracy leaders, who remember the fierce battles of the 1990s, are appalled.  Then chief secretary Anson Chan, who joined the democratic camp after her retirement, said she is “perplexed” by Leung’s popularity and cautioned the public to consider his “track record” before jumping to conclusions. She says he now seems completely different from the person she knew before.  If she were an American politician she would accuse him of pandering.  As it is, the question was only implied not articulated.  

              Hong Kong is thus learning another old lesson about electoral politics even if the public can’t yet elect its leaders.  For better or worse, voters are likely to give more weight to their immediate concerns than anything else when asked to decide who they want to govern them for the next five years.  Weighing what they know about the two main contenders, people obviously care less about pedigree or past performance and more about problems that need solving now, which explains Leung’s appeal. 

            He has not just spent the past two years growing orchids in his garden to use as gifts for Election Committee members, according to Allen Lee’s favorite anecdote.  Leung has also been writing an extended series of articles, published in the Chinese press, on matters of community concern with special focus on housing and the growing wealth gap.   When asked by journalists about a third runway for the airport during an unscripted New Year’s Day appearance at the big annual organic farmer’s market, he had a ready answer with something for everyone.  In principle, he replied, Hong Kong needs the third runway but pollution and other environmental concerns that people are raising must also be considered. 

          In contrast, Henry Tang’s New Year’s Day photo-op was a planned home visit to two families in a neat self-contained middle class constituency and his off-the-cuff comments have only reinforced the out-of-touch elitist image.  They call to mind the famous line from U.S. campaign politics about the elder President George Bush having been “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” 

            So now, thanks to CY Leung’s ambition and political skills and the new acceptability criterion, everyone is faced with an awkward choice.  Besides Beijing, that includes the big names who had already pledged for Henry Tang before the December 11 Election Committee election and pan-democrats who are waiting to hear about specific political issues.   So far neither candidate has had much to say about democratic institution-building, or about Beijing’s pending demand for political security legislation and the threat to political expression it contains.

(Next:  Pan-democrats and the Election Committee)

suzpepper@gmail.com

          Of all the post-mortems conducted after the November 6^th District Councils election, none have been more painful to watch than those done on the Civic Party.  Painful not because party members fared so badly because they really didn’t, except in contrast to expectations that they naturally did nothing to discourage among candidates and supporters beforehand.  But those expectations were not the only reason for the barrage of criticism and mockery leveled at the party afterward by friend, foe, and fellow party members alike.  It makes for a cautionary tale that says more about the pressures re-molding Hong Kong’s democracy movement than about the Civic Party’s failings.

            The party was set up in 2006 and contested its first District Councils election the next year.  Among 42 candidates in 2007, eight won.    A special election and new members boosted its number of local councilors to 12.  The party has grown in size from 100+ members to over 400, but was able to field only the same number of candidates, 41, seven of whom were successful (Nov. 14 post).   Not a great record but not surprising either.   Party members are mostly lawyers, academics, and other professionals who don’t have a lot of time to spend on grassroots social services and community politicking, which is what District Council constituencies are all about.  Party people said beforehand that their goal was to retain the 12 seats.  Perhaps 20 candidates had a chance of winning; the others were testing the waters for some in-service training.

         Yet the media focus on Civic Party candidates both before and after November 6^th  was out of all proportion to its small size and modest street-level ambitions compared to those of others in the pan-democratic camp.  For reasons that had nothing to do with those particular ambitions, the Civic Party was transformed during the course of the election campaign into a lightening rod that served to channel the pro-establishment camp’s entire litany of grievances against pan-democrats.  The really radical bad boys and girls of the campaign (People Power and League of Social Democrats), who never tired of denouncing Beijing’s one-party dictatorship, were more or less ignored as they played out their quarrel with the Democratic Party, which also got off relatively lightly. 

           That left the Civic Party to bear the brunt of their common opponents’ wrath.  The tone was set by a relentless mainland-style political struggle barrage that continued in the pro-Beijing press for months, aided and abetted by Hong Kong government officials and all their party allies.   The assault came in two waves.  One peaked before the election, the other followed afterward when it was compounded by recriminations from pan-democrats as well.   

          At first it seemed like over-kill for a party that was unlikely to win more than a dozen of 412 seats.   By Election Day, however, the aim of this targeted campaign seemed clear:  to discredit the most authoritative of the defiant voices remaining within Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp.   Radical People Power and LSD appeal is limited by their confrontational theatrics and the Democratic Party’s anti-establishment defiance has long since dissipated.  But Civic Party lawyers and academics could not be faulted on either score as they proceeded with their various projects designed to set legal precedents and entrench democratic practices in the name of Hong Kong’s long-term political development. 

             As a result, they have learned an old lesson the hard way about the contradictions between activist campaigning and winning elections.  If they insist on trying to do both  –  especially  now that the full force of the establishment can be mobilized against them  —  they will need more political dexterity and better communications skills than they were able to muster for the 2011 District Councils election.   By the end, they were sounding more and more like a team of talented amateurs who hadn’t quite realized which league they would be playing in or what they were up against.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR AND IMPORTED LABOR

          The origin of the pro-Beijing press campaign extends back several years and it was only an unlucky coincidence of timing, aided by the plodding pace of the judicial calendar, which brought two high-profile court cases into public view just ahead of the election.  The two cases were judicial reviews that concerned environmental standards and the right of foreign domestic helpers to apply for permanent residence.  The Civic Party did not directly sponsor either review but was supportive and party member lawyers represented plaintiffs in both cases.

            The bridge linking Hong Kong with the former Portuguese colony of Macau and points west has been controversial from its inception decades ago when the economic case could still be made for its construction (May 13 post).   Now it has become primarily a multi-billion dollar prestige project symbolizing Hong Kong integration with the mainland (and helping speed tourists on their way across the water to Macau’s gaming tables).  A judicial review was allowed on the pretext of environmental concerns and a decision was announced last April upholding one count in the case against the standards used by the government to approve the bridge design.  

          Rather than comply with the ruling, which would have been easy enough and quicker, the Hong Kong government appealed the original judgment.  This was duly overturned.  Construction is now proceeding full speed ahead.  But the government and pro-Beijing forces were not content to leave it at that and have supplied the media with a steady stream of information aimed at discrediting the Civic Party for its alleged behind-the-scenes role in promoting the judicial review.  Officials never miss an opportunity to remind everyone that the delay will add another HK$6.5 billion to the price tag and also left bridge builders idle for months.  Legal costs will add another $1.5 million to the bill.  The press campaign, ongoing since April, accuses the party of using its legal expertise to sabotage Hong Kong-mainland integration and block economic progress.  

           All of this escalated after the original judgment was overturned on September 27.    An elderly woman who served as plaintiff in the case, already identified by pro-Beijing papers as a Civic Party neighborhood volunteer, was now free to speak.  Granny Chu told interviewers she understood nothing about the environmental issues and would never have agreed to participate had she known that workers might be deprived of employment.  These drove the point home by organizing street protests to advertise their loss of work.  Angry citizens staged photo ops outside the Civic Party office, their placards denouncing the “black hand” disrupting Hong Kong’s stability.  

           No serious attempt was made by anyone to prove or disprove the cost and unemployment allegations, but they continued to be made throughout the weeks preceding the election while an even bigger uproar was underway over the rights of Hong Kong’s 290,000 imported domestic helpers.   According to Article 24 of the post-1997 Basic Law constitution, which follows pre-1997 colonial practice, all non-native born non-Chinese residents who have lived here for seven years can claim the right-of-abode or permanent residency.  Along with that privilege, granted at the Immigration Department’s discretion, come the right to vote, to be treated in public hospitals, qualify for social welfare, and so on.  All non-native residents, that is, except Hong Kong’s live-in low-wage domestic helpers.  Virtually all are women and most come either from Indonesia or the Philippines.   Besides serving the rich they make possible the maintenance of a middle class life-style for many thousands of working families.   

          Many thousands have also been here in service for over seven years but are routinely denied permanent residency by the Immigration Department.  Judicial reviews were allowed and the first decision was announced on September 30^th, with prominent Civic Party founding member Gladys Li representing the maid.    Judge Lam ruled that the Immigration Department’s practice of denying the right of residency just because people worked as servants was unconstitutional.

           A gift, gloated New People’s Party leader Regina Ip after the election (South China Morning Post, Nov. 20).  She was referring to the additional anti-Civic Party campaign issue that had been created over night and this one resonated with voters across the economic divide.  Her party strongly opposed the ruling as did the pro-business Liberal Party.  They spoke for the employers of maids concerned about disrupting their household arrangements. 

          The pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions organized street marches and workers protested that the maids, once free to leave domestic service, would be competing for jobs as well as low cost housing and other benefits.  Hotel workers said their jobs would be lost to the maids who typically speak better English and are well educated. Alarming headlines proclaimed the “floodgates” opening after government officials helpfully estimated that about 120,000 foreign helpers had been working here for at least seven years.  The women were caricatured breaking into the Immigration Department and the New Territories Association of Societies claimed to have collected 160,000 signatures on its protest petition.  A favorite placard read “Don’t vote for the Civic Party that has sold out Hong Kong” (Wen Wei Po, Oct. 24).

         Candidates who supported the maids’ right to apply for residency mostly all lost or their parties did badly:  People Power, the Civic Party, and Confederation of Trade Unions candidate Lee Cheuk-yan, who is still scheduled to head up a new group that will call itself New Labor.  The Democratic Party along with pro-Beijing and pro-government parties declared themselves against the right-of-abode for domestic helpers.

SNAKES, CAKES, AND OTHER REASONS

           Opponents are already anticipating the obituaries they will write for a crusading party they say is down and done for.  Their charge sheet on the causes of death will begin with the bridge, the maids, and last year’s referendum campaign.  More important for the party’s future direction were the verdicts of friends and fellow party members.  Some also criticized its leaders for the stands they had taken and causes promoted.  Others targeted their ineffective response to the crisis.

            During a morning-after press conference, current party leader Alan Leong Kah-kit (梁家傑) could not help venting his frustration and anger.  Discussing the losses, he blamed Beijing’s local liaison office for its well-known election strategizing and pro-Beijing parties for the equally well-known year-around gratuities they provide.  The usual polite term for this district-level party politicking is “small favors and benefits” (小恩小惠).  Leong used the more explicit “snakes, veggies, cakes, and dumplings”  (蛇齋餅粽)  to describe the low-cost seasonal treats that have become part of the pro-Beijing network’s neighborhood social services:  winter-time snake soup feasts, vegetarian dinners, moon cakes for mid-autumn, and Dragon Boat Festival dumplings in summer.

        Prove it, challenged a pro-Beijing newspaper reporter about liaison office involvement.  An insult to voters, railed academic commentator, Ivan Choy (Ming Pao Daily, Nov. 11).  Politics is about more than cut-rate dinner parties, declared the lead editorial in Jimmy Lai’s pro-democracy Next Magazine (Yi zhoukan, Nov. 10).  It noted the constituencies where residents had no need for subsidized provisions yet voted against democratic candidates anyway.

         Others criticized Leong and his party for their lawyer-like habits of maintaining a discreet silence while cases are pending and parsing words carefully ever after.  Having stood by Gladys Li in her court case, the party then seemed to equivocate as tensions rose saying the maids must have their day in court but that did not mean the Civic Party supported the right of abode for all of them.  Leong listed, correctly, all the excuses the Immigration Department could still use to deny residency, which failed to impress either those who sympathized with the maids or those who didn’t.  But by then it was too late:  the opposition had seized control of the issue and his response was not strong enough to regain the initiative.

         And then there was Ronny Tong Ka-wah (湯家驊):  legislator, barrister, and Civic Party founding member.  He became a dissenter last year over the party’s participation in the referendum campaign that protested the slow pace of political reform.  He wanted to show his support for the government’s reform plan by competing for one of the dual District Council/Legislative Council seats the plan created.   Against his party’s wishes he parachuted into a District Council constituency that rejected him on November 6^th.  He called himself “rudely defeated” by an unprecedented 56% turnout that gave him only 1,580 votes to his opponent’s 3,060. 

       Furious, he lashed out in an open letter blaming the party for his loss.  He blamed specifically its alliance with the radical LSD during the 2010 referendum campaign and the party’s failure to explain clearly its position on domestic helpers.   The Wall Street Journal’s November 8^th editorial added insult to injury by celebrating the defeat of so many radicals including him.  Think of it, he fumed, mixing me up with them.  We started out as a party targeting the middle class and professionals “to widen the pool of supporters for the Democratic Movement.”   But “a political party needs to be in tune with the concerns of the majority,” and the fate of the entire movement now hung in the balance.  Either we redefine our party’s direction, he concluded, or we are doomed.*

         He was right about the prospects for the movement but wrong about the reasons for its collapse on November 6^th.  More than anything else his and Alan Leong’s frustrations reflected their larger failure to acknowledge the challenge that has been building for years.  Pan-democrats have looked upon Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing loyalist minority like a ship passing in the night.  Twenty years ago they could afford that luxury, now they can’t. 

           Their loyalist opponents have learned enough about electoral politics to win control of Hong Kong’s District Councils and they have done this by using their multi-million dollar budgets to maintain full-time paid staffers in districts everywhere but especially in neighborhoods that appreciate the events they organize and services they provide.  They also run a disciplined operation that not only coordinates candidates with declared allies but with undeclared “independents” as well  –  like those affiliated with the ubiquitous Associations of Societies.  By parachuting into constituencies that had never seen them before, pan-democrats including both radicals and moderates demonstrated their failure to recognize the significance of their opponents’ ground game in setting the standards for community-level political work.   Having failed to calculate the lay-of-the-land beforehand, every single parachuter perished as a result.

        Yet Ronny Tong still does not grasp these basic new facts of Hong Kong’s political life, which is why he also does not yet appreciate that those dual use council seats were designed specifically for pro-Beijing candidates.  He thought he could move in and join the Shatin District Council  because he didn’t realize he was invading territory that the loyalist satellite Civil Force has been actively cultivating for over a decade.  Its founder, Lau Kong-wah, now a vice-chairman of the main pro-Beijing party, also parachuted into a Shatin constituency.  But it was occupied by one of his own people who immediately stepped aside to welcome him back and pave his way to the Legislative Council seat that Ronny Tong had hoped to win.

          If Hong Kong’s democracy movement is really doomed it will not be just because of bridges and maids and snakes and cakes.  The larger reason will lie in this failure of pan-democrats to acknowledge the strategy of grassroots institution-building that their opponents have perfected and are using to defeat them.

* Letter to Hong Kong, Nov. 13 (http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/radio3/lettertohongkong)

suzpepper@gmail.com

(updated Nov. 21)      

             Sure enough, Hong Kong’s political battlefields are now littered with the bones of pro-democracy fighters who tried parachuting into other people’s territory despite the known risks.  Radicals wanted to teach moderates and especially the Democratic Party a lesson for reneging on their 2010 political reform pledges.   Others including both moderates and radicals thought they could exploit the new opportunities that came with the 2010 reform package and turned District Council seats into stepping stones for admission to the Legislative Council.  Both strategies failed marking the greatest setback for Hong Kong’s democracy movement since 1997, and the most important election victory ever for pro-Beijing forces.  These are led by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) and its Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) ally. 

            The result of the November 6^th District Councils election was not just a defeat for pan-democrats but a rout, built on losses that have been accumulating untended for years.  Each of 412 constituencies sends one representative to sit on Hong Kong’s 18 District Councils, but elections this year were held in only 336 constituencies.  Candidates in 76 others were elected unopposed and only one of the 76 was a democrat.  The basic line-up of winners and losers:                        

 Figures are calculated from the Electoral Affairs Commission official candidate lists (http://www.eac.gov.hk/ ), and partisan affiliation of independents update based on Ming Pao Daily, Nov. 8.

Key:  

pan-dems.   DP – Democratic Party; ADPL – Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood; Civics – Civic Party; Neo-dems – New Democratic Alliance; NWSC – Neighborhood and Workers Service Center;  PP/PV/F – People Power/Power Voters/Frontier; LSD – League of Social Democrats; others – Confederation of Trade Unions, Land and Justice League, Power for Democracy, Citizens Radio, Democratic Coalition, independent democrats, etc. 

pro-govt.  DAB/FTU – Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong/Federation of Trade Unions; CF – Civil Force; LP – Liberal Party; ES – Economic Synergy; New PP -  New People’s Party; others –  Hong Kong, Kowloon, New Territories Associations of Societies; New Century Forum; independents, undeclared,  etc.

Note:  independent pro-democracy candidates usually identify their orientation but pro-government independents and undeclared candidates usually do not so these “independent” partisan divisions are approximations only.  In the last (2007) District Councils election, the HK, KN, and NT Associations of Societies were major identified candidate sponsors, but this year accounted for only three declarations.  (Update, Nov. 21:  seven independent winners, originally calculated as pro-government, have since been identified as pan-democrats.)

___________________________________________________________________ 

          Opinion polls will hopefully offer some more precise measure of what people were thinking and why they voted as they did but there was little indication before Election Day that the results would be quite so dramatic.  In the meantime, matching up what candidates said and did with voters’ responses is a good place to begin.   

PRO-DEMOCRACY LOSERS

          Most striking was the defeat suffered by the radical people power movement.   Of the pro-democracy parties listed above, only the first two, the Democratic Party and the Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, supported the 2010 reform package and gave the government the support needed for Legislative Council approval.  But only the last two of those pro-democracy parties opted to use the election to punish DP and ADPL candidates for compromising on the 2010 reforms.   The others joined the pre-election candidate coordination exercise and avoided stepping on one another’s’ toes.

              The People Power coalition led by Raymond Wong Yuk-man, together with the League of Social Democrats led by Andrew To and “Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, consequently parachuted  into DP and ADPL constituencies all over town.  The challengers campaigned under the slogan “a vote for a vote” ( 票債票償 ) meaning a debt to be paid in votes for the 2010 betrayal of promises made at that time.  Many of these radical candidates were young first-timers on the campaign trail and new to the constituencies as well.  A few others were veterans most notably People Power legislator Albert Chan who wanted to deprive  DP chairman Albert Ho of enough votes to dislodge him from the District Council seat he has held for several years (Oct. 17 post). 

           They said their aim was to generate greater public understanding of their cause rather than to win seats but ultimately they did neither and called somber press conferences to admit the failure of their election stratgy.   There was no spinning the consequences to positive advantage since of 89 candidates who campaigned under the “vote for a vote” slogan, only one was successful in winning a seat himself.  Most did not even receive enough votes to harm their intended targets.  People Power candidates made the difference in only four constituencies to deprive DP candidates of victory.  Two of the seats were won by the DAB and two by independents.  Both the DP’s Albert Ho and ADPL chairman Frederick Fung survived with votes to spare, and the LSD could not even save its own six incumbents including Andrew To.  Long Hair won 970 votes to his hard-line pro-Beijing opponent’s 2,700, almost exactly the same number he received four years ago.

         Still, punishment was not reserved for radicals alone although it is not clear whether voters also wanted to reject moderate democrats or only resented them as strangers trying to elbow into constituencies for political gain.  But the uninspiring DP vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai lost his bid to unseat a conservative opponent in a middle class district on Hong Kong Island and would have lost even without the challenge of People Power’s chairman.  Far away across town in the northern New Territories the same thing happened.  Even though he had been widely tipped to win, popular veteran trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan was defeated by the young novice candidate who had a six-year record of DAB/FTU-sponsored community service to her credit in the district. 

         Even worse for pan-democrats was the ousting of some of their highest profile incumbents, including both radicals and moderates, who were unable to defend their own District Council seats.  Radical Civic Party legislator Tanya Chan lost hers to a pro-business Liberal Party candidate in the upscale Peak District of Hong Kong Island.  But veteran moderate DP legislator Lee Wing-tat lost his New Territories seat as well.  So did another uninspiring DP candidate, legislator Wong Sing-chi.

         The only bright spot for democrats was the performance of two small parties, which opposed the 2010 reforms and did well anyway.  One was the Neo-Democrats or New Democratic Alliance whose members left the Democratic Party in protest last year.  They have a long history in a few New Territories constituencies.  So does the Neighborhood and Workers Service Center.  This group is organized much like the DAB’s grassroots services along the lines of the old neighborhood volunteer Kai Fong associations.

PRO-GOVERNMENT WINNERS

          Ironically given the disdain for electoral politics originally prevailing in pro-Beijing circles here, their politicians are now masters of the game they aim to contain and control.  During the past 20 years since the DAB was founded, party leaders have not only learned all the tricks of the electioneering trade.  They also apply them with the organizational strength, discipline, and funding that only a rich successful ruling communist party can provide.   When fully mobilized, as its 20,000-strong membership was for this election, the combination is hard to beat.

            Democrats rightly complain about the unfair advantage pro-Beijing forces enjoy with their unlimited unidentified sources of funding and pervasive social networks.  But in addition to all that, the pro-Beijing camp’s adaptive skills allow them to disguise weaknesses and exploit strengths for maximum effect.  The 2011 District Councils election campaign was a near-flawless example of how those skills are being put to work in a political system that is purpose built to reward conservatives and curb populist instincts.

           When pan-democrats challenged them to debate, pro-Beijing candidates almost always declined.  They also refused in all their campaign literature, distributed by each candidate in every constituency, to discuss the pros and cons of political reform or the political system — except to denounce those who had opposed the government’s 2010 reform package.  District Council constituencies are about non-political livelihood issues  –  the provision of grassroots benefits and favors individualized for each constituency and with special emphasis on those most loyal of voters, the elderly.   The candidates themselves rarely ventured beyond such practical matters and rarely allowed themselves to be provoked.   

          Out on street corners with their fliers and campaign teams, pro-Beijing candidates were all sweetness and light.  But the same could not be said for the pro-Beijing press that has, for the past two months,  kept up a steady stream of invective directed primarily against the Civic Party.  This focused on two important legal challenges that party member lawyers helped defend although not in the party’s name.   Yet even here the case against them was framed primarily in terms of the implications for ordinary workers’ benefits and employment prospects  –  the classic ploy of exploiting popular fears for political gain.  The message nevertheless struck a responsive grassroots cord and the FTU organized small street marches to publicize the point since pro-Beijing newspapers have the lowest circulation in the territory.

                Candidate coordination was based on community service work and familiarity with the constituencies contested.  In one rare case, where DAB vice chairman Lau Kong-wah registered at the last minute in his old New Territories bailiwick, the pro-Beijing incumbent who had already registered to defend his seat promptly withdrew from the race.  Any controversy was kept well hidden from public view and even the campaign teams were organized for photo calls.   Thousands of DAB and FTU volunteers came out to support candidates as needed with banners, posters, street corner handouts, sound trucks, and minivan escort services for old folks on Election Day.

         Nothing was left to chance.  They even outpaced pan-democrats last summer during the voter registration period when pro-Beijing organizers coordinated with the government’s publicity drive and democrats were noticeable by their absence.  Voter turnout was up slightly to 41.4 % from 38.8% in 2007, no doubt in response to all the controversies.  But voting patterns reflected in the increased turnout seemed to reflect last summer’s registration drive.   A net total 127,000 new voters were added to the rolls and the biggest increase was among seniors aged 61 to 65.   Overall about one-quarter of Hong Kong’s 3.5 million registered voters are over 60, the age cohort least likely to be impressed by radical politicians and most in need of the DAB’s community services.

            After the 2007 election, democrats sacrificed their last District Council chairmanship to factional infighting.  This year they won a bare majority in only one New Territories district (Kwai Tsing)  –  15 to 14  — and it remains to be seen wehther they will forfeit their right to this lead chair as well.   There is only one democrat on each of three councils, none on another (Wanchai), and only a handful on most.  These elected councilors will be topped up with 68 government appointees and if past practice is followed all will be pro-government conservatives. 

IMPLICATIONS

            As for District Council work itself, the loss of more pro-democracy seats will make little difference.  The councils were never intended to be more than advisory bodies and sounding boards for public opinion on local issues.  Since 1997 when the government restored the practice of appointing some members, conservatives all, the councils have essentially been used to guide public opinion and generate support for government policies.   But political dynamics are something else again and the consequences of electoral defeat, especially this one, cannot be written off as cavalierly as some did beforehand.

          The greatest loss is the defeat of the people power movement now being attributed almost solely to Raymond Wong.  His confrontational tactics, rude language, and street theater antics in the Legislative Council chamber are widely disliked by other democrats as well as conservatives.  But there was a general recognition among democrats that he was saying the things that someone should say.  The original League of Social Democrats, founded in 2006, helped round out the division of labor within the fragmented democracy movement by adding a much-needed boost of energy and enthusiasm.  For a time they served as the radical spearhead while others appealed to other constituencies in different ways.

          After the letdown over last year’s political reform drive, young people flocked to join the LSD and it seemed set for a leading role.  That continued until Wong broke with other LSD leaders first over their failure to defend his protégé Edward Yum who was arrested on a rape charge last December,  and then more seriously over the candidate coordination issue.  But Wong’s People Power movement seemed to thrive, absorbing the lion’s share of LSD energy along with Emily Lau’s abandoned Frontier fighters, and young people who were inspired by last year’s many campaigns.  Thousands turned out for this year’s July First march that convinced the government to re-think its plan for abolishing by-elections.  The march also reinforced the conviction among pan-democrats that feet on the ground are at least as important as votes in a ballot box. 

           Now both the LSD and People Power are defeated and their leaders discredited by failure.  The movement as a whole stands to lose an important source of youthful idealism that will be difficult to regain before next year’s Legislative Council election, if at all.  Raymond Wong nevertheless sees no danger ahead for the movement and says he has no intention of changing his confrontational style or the “vote for a vote” slogan.  He says Albert Ho made a mistake in agreeing to the 2010 compromise political reform bargain and he, Raymond Wong, will not work with the DP again until it acknowledges that mistake.  Radical candidates won 10% of the total vote and Wong says this is a good beginning for 2012 when proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post will decide the winners.

        The second major cost will come due with that election and its outlines are appearing even before the dust has settled on this one.    For his part, DP chairman Albert Ho is saying this election vindicated his compromise political reform decision.  But his decision entailed linking the District Councils to the Legislative Council with the addition of five seats in the latter to be filled by District Councilors.  The original proposal was that they would choose the five from among themselves.  Now only they can nominate and contest but the general public will be allowed to make the final choice.

           It soon became apparent, however, that the only District Councilors likely to be approved by voters outside their own small constituencies are politicians that already have territory-wide name recognition.  Still no problem, said Ho and other moderates, since pan-democrats have more popular stars in their stable of Legislative Councilors than does the opposition.  The only problem is that many do not also occupy seats on the District Councils and their only remedy failed.  DP vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai was defeated; so was union leader Lee Cheuk-yan; so was the Civic Party’s Ronny Tong who tried the parachute routine against his party’s wishes.  Meanwhile three incumbents were also specifically targeted by the pro-government campaign machine and they failed to retain their seats as well.  Tanya Chan lost hers as did Lee Wing-tat and Wong Sin-chi.  The only person left standing as a plausible candidate is Albert Ho himself and democrats will be lucky to win one of those five new District Council-linked seats he green lighted. 

         Pan-democrats single greatest failure, however, derived from their inexplicable refusal to acknowledge much less explain to voters the full implications of their opponent’s successful ground game.   DAB and government leaders mentioned their long-term plans last year but have kept them carefully unspoken and unexplained ever since and no one else discussed them either.  Hence for the second time since 2005 when the strategy was first revealed, no one explained to their constituents that they were not just voting for friendly faces and welcome services.   

            The District Councils have become the building blocks of a mainland-style people’s congress system.  This is based on direct elections at the local level but indirectly-elected communist party-controlled elections to fill congress seats at all levels above.  The arrangement is meant to legitimize the system in the public’s eyes; just as Hong Kong’s one-person one-vote elections are legitimizing the DAB’s growing strength. 

          Yet the closest anyone came to explaining these implications to voters was a full-page newspaper ad sponsored by five pro-democracy parties (not including People Power or the LSD) shortly before the election.  The ad read simply, “Don’t allow the establishment parties to control the District Councils,” and obviously had no impact whatsoever.  Hong Kong’s democracy movement has been based on the dream of a directly-elected government but achieving that goal has been transformed into a long-running political war of attrition and pan-democrats are not winning.  

suzpepper@gmail.com

             With only days to go before the November 6^th District Councils election, nothing has happened to dispel the clouds looming for months over pan-democrats’ campaign efforts (Aug. 24 post).  At the district level, democratic candidates have taken a back seat since elections were introduced in the 1980s, when the new neighborhood advisory bodies were called District Boards.  Hong Kong’s young democracy movement set its sights higher and focused on the Legislative Council where aspirations could be championed to greater effect.    As a result, the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) and its network of allied groups now dominate the 18 District Councils.

        Their mandate is renewed every four years and the pro-Beijing coalition has been busy since the 1990s building on the tradition of informal associations and self-help societies that have always been part of local life.  Democrats made unexpected gains in the 2003 election, exploiting popular anger over the government’s attempt to force acceptance of national security legislation.  But the main proprietors of this turf successfully reclaimed it in 2007.  

             Ada Wong, a member of Hong Kong Island’s Wanchai District Council from 2000 to 2007, explained the difficulties for pan-democrats in practical terms at one of last year’s many public meetings on electoral reform.  No matter how many banners we put up on the streets and how many sound trucks we send through neighborhoods, she said, the other side always has more of everything:   fliers, loud speakers, candidates, and above all organization.*   Most important are the permanent paid staffers in DAB district offices where someone is always on hand to organize events and help residents with whatever troubles them.  None of the pro-democracy parties and groups can boast comparable resources, which makes it impossible for them to compete in the districts on a level playing field. 

            Since it would have been the principal beneficiary, the DAB was naturally a forthright champion of last year’s political reform package.  As originally drafted, this would have created a single constituency of all 400 District Councilors and allowed them to select five of their number to become Legislative Councilors. The idea was to increase the number of such indirectly-elected legislators over time and let them replace those now selected by the controversial “small-circle” occupation-based constituencies.  Their representatives account for half of all legislators.  

            The new District Councils constituency will still nominate candidates from among its 400+ members.  Only they will have the right to nominate and be nominated, and candidates will need 15 endorsement signatures to qualify.   But in deference to democratic demands, all registered voters will be able make the final choice, from among the qualified candidates, for the five District Councilors who will be able to serve concurrently as Legislative Councilors.  They are already being called “super legislators” because of their special status. 

          This change has added a new dimension and raises the stakes for district races where constituencies are small, turnout low, and councilors focus on neighborhood services.   Whether pro-democracy candidates will benefit from the heightened interest is something else again.  No one is predicting anything but doom and gloom — except for the pro-Beijing camp, which anticipates another sweeping victory built on its 2007 revival.  For pan-democrats, the indicators are almost all negative.

NO CONTEST

           To qualify as a candidate, registered voters must be over 21 years of age and collect the nominating signatures of 10 other registered voters in the relevant constituency.  Only those who fail to win 5% of the vote will lose their HK$3,000 candidate’s deposit. **  But easy as it is to stand as a candidate, the first big batch of winners was called as soon as the nominating period ended on September 28^th.  

        A record 935 candidates registered to contest the combined total 412 seats open to election in the 18 District Councils’ 412 constituencies  –  with over 70 uncontested.  Once the Electoral Affairs Commission finished processing and vetting, the final figures were 915 candidates eligible to run in 336 constituencies, with 76 uncontested  –  up from only 40 in 2007.   Almost all the uncontested seats will be filled by the DAB, its allies, and other pro-government candidates. ***     The DAB alone can claim 35 of the seats and is already boasting that it has won enough to nominate two “super legislators” next year.

CHALLENGE FROM WITHIN

         Why so many uncontested seats?  Incumbents’ advantage plus pan-democrats’ inability to compete at this level are the main reasons.  Another is pan-democrat infighting and the collapse of the “coordination mechanism,” used since 2003 to keep democratic candidates from opposing each other in any given constituency.   Unlike Legislative Council elections that use proportional representation in multi-seat districts, District Council seats are filled from small single-seat constituencies where the British winner-takes-all tradition applies.  In these constituencies with turnouts of only a few thousand voters each, when three candidates vie for the same seat and two are democrats, the other side usually wins.  But thanks to last year’s split between so-called radicals and moderates over the latter’s compromise on political reform, some radicals dropped out of the coordination exercise.

        Despite repeated pleas, dire warnings  –   and expectations that in the end he would not go through with his pledge “to teach the Democratic Party a lesson” for leading the  compromise  –  Raymond “Mad Dog” Wong Yuk-man [ 黃毓民 ] is adamant.  Early this year, he broke with his old League of Social Democrats comrades over this issue among others (Jan.24, 2011 post).  His new People Power [Renmin liliang] movement has grown rapidly since then absorbing the lion’s share of LSD radical strength plus that of Emily Lau’s old Frontier fighters and young people energized by last year’s many campaigns.   LSD leaders have since dropped out of the coordination mechanism but there is as yet no sign of a re-marriage between the two groups.  They rally separately with black and yellow People Power and Frontier banners, carried by young and old alike, outnumbering LSD red flags by at least three-to-one.

         Howls of outrage (from moderates) rose as soon as the preliminary uncontested seat figures were calculated because along with them came the calculations of seats being contested by more than two candidates more than one of whom is a democrat.  The radicals (People Power, Voters Power, and LSD) are deliberately challenging Democratic Party candidates in some 40 constituencies and Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL) hopefuls in nine.

              When asked why he is willing to lose seats to the DAB by parachuting untried candidates into the same constituency alongside other democrats, Raymond Wong makes no apologies.  Neither does People Power chairman, Christopher Lau Gar-hung  [劉嘉鴻].  They scorn the coordination mechanism for agreeing in advance to parcel out pan-democracy candidates among the constituencies because it has created sinecure seats for some, stifled debate, and has not stopped the DAB’s advance.  Since TV advertising is banned and strict equal-time rules are enforced for TV programming, candidates do it mostly the old-fashioned way.  Within days of the September 28 announcement, People Power campaigners were on the streets handing out 100,000 copies of a slick new 30-page pamphlet explaining their reasons. 

          People Power says that Democratic Party negotiators betrayed the democracy movement by breaking their promise and compromising last year on a phony deal that may provide their candidates with a few more seats but does nothing to advance the cause of Hong Kong’s democratic development.  They and those who went along with them have forfeited their democratic credentials and gone over to the government side so there is nothing to distinguish between them and the DAB (also:  www.peoplepower.hk ).  

          When asked why they didn’t use more of their candidates to fill some of the empty slots in uncontested constituencies, People Power replies with its reasons:  to teach the Democratic Party a lesson.  Wong and Lau want especially to keep Democratic Party candidates from winning any of the extra seats that came with the political reform package they brokered. The radicals ask why moderates failed to contest more constituencies themselves.  We would have if we could, they reply to taunts of lackluster leadership and weak-kneed resolve from their tormenters.  Defending its line up, the Democratic Party points out that it is trying harder than in 2007 when it ran 108 candidates compared to 132 this year.

          As for pro-Beijing partisans, their election machinery is humming along so far without a hitch.  The DAB alone is fielding 182 candidates, 114 of whom are incumbents.  Their allies include the Federation of Trade Unions and Civil Force, a group founded by DAB vice-chairman Lau Kong-wah, plus the New Territories, Kowloon, and Hong Kong Island Associations of Societies.  All DAB candidates and allies are carefully coordinated leaving no crossed wires in any constituency.

RADICALS vs. MODERATES vs. THE DAB

           A key contest to watch is the one underway in Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho’s Lok Tsui constituency.  He has, since 1999, represented its voters on the Tuen Mun District Council in the northern New Territories region of Hong Kong.  Pro-Beijing strategists did what would be expected by assigning a second-tier candidate from one of their satellite organizations to contest Ho’s district.  This would have guaranteed him a safe re-election victory  –  to acknowledge his role in brokering last year’s political reform compromise without actually handing him the seat on a silver platter.  

            The plan would surely have succeeded had a complication not appeared just before nominations closed in the form of one more candidate:  People Power legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip, a leader of last year’s referendum campaign.  Their announced aim is to topple Ho who has said he will resign as Democratic Party chairman if he is defeated.  Only Raymond Wong himself would stand a better chance of generating enough competitive interest to achieve the desired goal, making this constituency a key test of his defiant gamble.

       Other tests of radical strength include the challenge by LSD legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung who is targeting DAB stalwart Ip Kwok-him.  Long Hair is parachuting into the Kwun Lung constituency where Ip easily defeated two other candidates in 2007, to win a seat on Hong Kong Island’s Central and Western District Council.  (Ip received 2,700 votes, the others 477 votes combined.)  He wants to use the seat as a stepping stone to become one of the five new “super legislators.”  Leung aims to dislodge the stone if he can.   Democratic Party vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai is also eyeing a super seat and People Power chairman Christopher Lau aims to block him.  Only in this case both are parachuting into alien territory currently occupied by a protégé of everyone’s bête noire, Regina Ip.

         First time People Power candidate Edward Yum is challenging veteran pro-Beijing trade union leader Chan Yuen-han in the working class district of  Wong Tai Sin.  He is “Mudgrass Ma” who precipitated the People Power/LSD split over his arrest on a rape charge.  The case was later dropped.  Chan was coaxed out of retirement as one of the few pro-Beijing politicians with enough territory-wide name-recognition to secure a super seat in next year’s Legislative Council election.  He is challenging her to a debate.  She will probably win whether she debates or not  –  especially since there is also a Democratic Party candidate contesting the same Wong Tai Sin seat.

A LOSING STRATEGY?

         The answer depends on definitions of winning and losing.  As everyone knows, election fields are littered with the bones of politicians who tried parachuting into other people’s constituencies.   Probably neither Albert Chan nor Long Hair will be able to unseat their opponents and they are the strongest of the radical candidates entering the lists.  Both challengers know the rules, so what are they hoping to achieve with a strategy that seems calculated to benefit pro-government politicians? 

            Since they are all still failing to publicly articulate the links between the mainland indirectly-elected party-controlled people’s congress system and the DAB’s plans for a similar indirectly-elected system built on the District Councils, we need to focus on what the radicals are actually doing instead of what they are not saying.   We will also ignore the mischievous whispers of pro-Beijing tea house pundits who speculate that Raymond Wong is actually a secret communist party member.  They like to think he might be following in the footsteps of pro-democracy icon Szeto Wah whose posthumous memoirs are still resonating in these circles (July 25, 2011 post). 

           Assuming Raymond Wong is what he has always claimed to be, namely an ardent anti-communist democrat, his aim must be to do what Hong Kong’s democracy campaigners have always done after every disappointment.  When officials and institutions fail to deliver, activists improvise as their only means of keeping people engaged and the issues alive.  People Power and LSD radicals seem to have written off the District Councils as a lost cause so winning or losing seats is not their concern.  Whether the strategy is able to grow electoral constituencies also seems beside the point.  The aim is to use the 2011 District Councils election campaign to preserve and strengthen the energy generated by last year’s political reform drive  –  and perhaps pressure some aging moderates into stiffening their resolve as well.   As for the voters, opinion polls are not yet available so how the public will judge all this is anyone’s guess.

* University of Hong Kong, Nov. 27, 2010.

** http://www.eac.gov.hk/en/distco/2011dc_guide.htm

*** Electoral Affairs Commission website; also,  Ming Pao Daily News, Sept. 29, Wen Wei Po, Sept. 29 and Oct. 11.

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            Nothing better illustrates the political distance that still exists between Beijing and Hong Kong  than the August 16-18 visit of Vice-Premier Li Keqiang.  From the 1980s when they had to begin thinking seriously about Hong Kong’s return, mainland officials  were guided by inherited assumptions in Hong Kong itself about the colony being “an economic not a political city.”  Those were the officials’ words.  Local conservatives liked to call it “the administrative absorption of politics.”   Together officials and conservatives convinced themselves that all sectors of the community would make a relatively easy transition from British colonial prosperity to its Chinese-ruled counterpart and everyone would live happily ever after.   

            The anti-national security protest in 2003 and the 2003/04 election cycle that followed put an end to such thinking.  Afterward, Beijing began to respond if not more tolerantly at least more realistically to the political interests and concerns that had grown during Hong Kong’s pre-1997 transition to Chinese rule.  Today, 15 years later, those differences may not be any greater than before 1997 but they are more clearly defined as mainland pressures for political integration increase.  And despite the never-ending struggle for universal suffrage, the differences that provoke the most instinctive response are not about electoral reform but perceived threats to Hong Kong’s freedom of political expression.

        The visit was not billed as a major public event but it is not every day that a vice-premier comes calling and all the usual arrangements for an important guest were made well in advance.  Le Keqiang is slated to succeed Premier Wen Jiabao when he retires next year.  Highlights of Li’s visit included his attendance at the University of Hong Kong’s centenary celebrations and at the formal opening of a modernistic new Hong Kong government complex.  Li also put in an appearance on the floor of the stock exchange, saw how ordinary neither-rich-nor-poor families live in a middle class housing development, and had dinner with Legislative Councilors. 

MAINLAND-STYLE SECURITY

          The distance between Beijing and Hong Kong was illustrated by the security arrangements surrounding Li’s every move or more accurately the uproar they provoked.   Those were mainland arrangements not ours, railed the critics, during protests that have only just begun to subside.  Reverberations seem set to continue for weeks while various panels and commissions conduct their inquiries and investigations.   Tensions have risen here during the past year with frustrated demonstrators growing more disruptive and the police responding in kind.   The fear now is that the unprecedented security arrangements laid on for Li Keqiang’s visit may signal a change in the government’s treatment of journalists and protestors generally

        Most dramatic was the large contingent of uniformed police who converged on the HKU campus with an unannounced mission to block all entrances to the assembly hall and keep all uninvited guests well away.  This led to the revelation afterward that some 3,000 police officers or one-tenth the total force had been deployed to protect Vice-Premier Li during his three-day stay.  Hong Kong’s new no-nonsense police commissioner, Andy Tsang, suggested the numbers were needed to prevent terrorism –  no hint of which has ever been detected here.

          The Laguna City housing tour went well until a resident, Wong Kin, and his daughter ventured too close to police lines.   Wong was arrested presumably because of the T-shirt he was wearing.  On the back was printed in very large red and blue Chinese characters:  “REVERSE THE VERDICT ON JUNE FOURTH; the Revolution Has Not Yet Succeeded; BUILD DEMOCRACY; Comrades Must Still Persevere” (Standard, photo, Sept. 2).  June Fourth refers to the 1989 removal of protestors from Tiananmen Square, Beijing, after their movement was officially designated subversive.  Hong Kong democrats’ favorite rallying cry is to reverse the 1989 verdict and remove the subversive label that justified the crackdown. 

            Wong  was not shouting slogans or protesting in any other way except for his shirt, but he was physically picked up and carried away by several plainclothes members of the VIP protection team.  One of the men reportedly told the daughter that it was “rude” to wear such a shirt.  Police later said they arrested the man because he moved in too close to their security zone, and then subsequently  fined him for an old jaywalking offense.   Police also  prevented a TV cameraman from filming the whole scene (Apple, photos, Aug. 31).   Later they claimed they mistook his camera for a “black shadow” and reacted instinctively.

        Local journalists actually nursed a range of grievances.  Vice-Premier Li was present at over 20 events but Hong Kong journalists were allowed to cover only half that number.  Photographers and media people were kept at a distance throughout.  Chief Secretary Henry Tang called their protestations “rubbish.”

          Legislators were fed well enough at the dinner party but the democrats among them said they had no appetite.  No one was allowed within earshot of the main guest and at least 20 black-shirted security guards, roughly one for each democratic legislator, hovered among their tables watching them while they ate.  The man assigned to Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho stood so attentively just behind his chair that the guard might have been mistaken for an overly solicitous waiter had he not been dressed from head to toe in basic black (Mingbao, photo, Aug. 18).    Diners were not allowed to leave their seats until the guest-of-honor had departed.     Radical rabble-rouser “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, known for shouting out slogans at such events, was invited but not allowed in the door even though he had traded his Che Guevara T-shirt and jeans for a proper jacket and trousers.  Reason:  no tie.  Lucky he didn’t wear one or they might not have had another excuse and he would have disrupted the proceedings for sure.

        During an August 28^th TV interview, legislator Tsang Yok-sing tried to put matters in perspective but only succeeded in making them worse.  Tsang is a founding member of Hong Kong’s main pro-Beijing political party and currently the Legislative Council’s chief presiding officer.  He was answering a question from Newsline program host Michael Chugani about who was responsible for the security arrangements.  Everyone had been heaping blame on the pugnacious new police chief.  Tsang said, in effect, blame mainland officials not the Hong Kong police.  They must have been under orders to guarantee “complete peace and total security,” he said, since that is the customary demand whenever Beijing officials come to town.  The aim, he continued, is to ensure that they do not “see or hear” anything they do not want to see or hear.

         Tsang’s younger brother was, as usual,  less diplomatic.  Tsang Tak-sing heads the Hong Kong government’s Home Affairs Bureau and his August 28^th post on the bureau’s website chided Hong Kongers for not focusing on “more important issues.”  He was referring to the basket of economic gifts that Li Keqiang brought with him.  This practice extends back to pre-2003 days when mainland officials believed Hong Kong’s only interests were economic.  The gifts are always presented as favors designed to benefit Hong Kong by allowing closer integration with the mainland’s burgeoning economy.  But such ties inevitably anticipate greater political integration.  They also benefit the business community first, and are responsible for the pro-Beijing tilt of its influence on the Hong Kong government, none of which is likely to score points with the democratic opposition in its present mood.   The Tsang brothers reportedly hold their posts at Beijing’s behest.  Both men have roots in Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing community extending back to their student days in the 1960s and both are generally assumed to be members of Hong Kong’s unacknowledged communist party branch.

HONG KONG-STYLE RESPONSE: Theatrics with a Purpose

        Pan-democrats scoffed at the attempt to lecture them on what was and was not important and Li’s economic gifts were lost amid the upsurge of protest over mainland-style security.   The head of HKU, known as its vice chancellor, apologized repeatedly for the on-campus police presence, which had apparently been beefed up at the last minute without his knowledge in response to a Facebook flash by radical alumni to stage something dramatic in the vicinity of the convocation hall.  Vice Chancellor Tsui even took out Chinese-language newspaper ads, in his own name, declaring that faculty and students are masters of the campus, HKU is a bastion of free speech, and so on (Mingbao, Apple, Aug. 23). Students did likewise; 1,500 put their names to a full-page proclamation declaring August 18^th the “darkest day in the history of the university” (Mingbao, Aug. 23).

         Dean of the Law School, Johannes Chan, said that three students confined by police in a stairwell had grounds to sue for false imprisonment and he himself was willing to act as their legal counsel.  The Bar Association issued a statement calling on the police to explain their legal basis since Hong Kong had no law authorizing the creation of “core security zones.”  Police had used that concept to explain their heavy-handed treatment of students who ventured too close.  A thousand students and faculty members gathered in the quad for a candlelight vigil while speakers discussed the violations of free speech and their freedom to protest on hallowed campus ground.

          News media protestors were equally indignant, saying they had never been kept so far away from visiting mainland dignitaries.  Government officials insisted that adequate media arrangements had been provided for all of Li Keqiang’s appearances.  Head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Mak Yin-ting, said those arrangements were mostly for the official media and others did not relish working as government mouthpieces.  She later called on colleagues to boycott handouts from the government’s Information Services Department. 

           Usually the media covers other people’s demonstrations but on this occasion they organized one of their own.  Mak led 300 journalists and photographers to police headquarters where they tore up their petition rather than hand it over to the low-ranking officer assigned to receive it.  The photographers carried placards with their motto “Pictures Tell the Truth” (Sing Tao, photo, Aug. 21).  They also returned to Laguna City where an unrepentant Mr. Wong posed for many pictures in his famous T-shirt.  Finally, after more days of agitation, Police Commissioner Tsang agreed to meet journalist  representatives to receive their  complaints in person.  “The police have become a political tool for suppressing demonstrators,” thundered one of Ming Pao Daily’s many editorials.  The police adopted high-handed mainland public security methods and the chief secretary said our protests are rubbish.  “Freedom of the press and freedom to gather news have never been so threatened” (Aug. 23). 

         The police commissioner may eventually wish he had shown a little less bravado when he said apologizing is for wimps  –  a dig at his predecessor’s habit of saying sorry when officers stepped out of line.  Last Saturday, September 3,  500+ young people turned out in a show of defiance with a  black-themed protest march mocking police for the August 16 Laguna City incident when they claimed they mistook a camera for a “black shadow.”  Those were actually the words of Commissioner Tsang answering qustions at a hastily called panel meeting of Legislative Councilors on Aug. 29.  Special meetings can be called during the council’s summer recess.  Commissioner Tsang is the black shadow hanging over Hong Kong’s freedom of speech, said protestors. 

           The significance this time was that the Facebook flash demo was illegal and all 500+ marchers could have been arrested for unlawful assembly in a public place because they did not notify the police in advance.  Organizers said they did not follow police procedures on purpose because freedom of assembly is a basic human right.   But protesters were inspired in their defiance by the police themselves who had  –  with the arrest of a man for wearing political slogans on his shirt  –  introduced mainland criteria of political security in practice without any legal authority for doing so.  Li Keqiang’s visit was billed as a goodwill gesture intended to mark another step in Hong Kong’s long  journey of accommodation with Beijing.   Instead, his visit had the opposite effect by reinforcing old fears and reaffirming  political distinctions between Hong Kong and the mainland that show no signs of easing.

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           Hong Kong may not have an elected government but onlookers would never know it from the sights and sounds of August, heading into a year that will see four separate local contests.   If one of the prerequisites for achieving democracy is a population accustomed to electoral ways and means, then Hong Kong is well on its way regardless of Beijing’s endless delaying tactics.  

            First in line is the territory-wide District Councils election on November 6.    Election of the Election Committee follows on December 11.  This 1,200-member body is elected by an assortment of community leaders and organizations, divided into four sectors, 38 subsectors, and so on.  Nominations will be finalized in November.  The total number of registered electors is about 250,000.  They are by-and-large the same people who form the Functional Constituencies responsible for electing half the Legislative Council.   Regardless of who it elects, this cumbersome arrangement is designed to guarantee “safe” conservative outcomes.  

             Once formed, the Election Committee’s job is to endorse Beijing’s approved candidate to succeed Chief Executive Donald Tsang for the 2012-2017 term.  CE nominations will end on March 4 next year.  The endorsement “election” is scheduled for March 25.   His successor will take office on July First and preside over the grand finale Legislative Council contest in September 2012, to choose all 70 of the newly-expanded council’s directly-elected and indirectly-elected members.  The government’s June-August voter registration drive is just ending.  Provisional figures show an all-time high of 3.5 million registered voters or roughly half the total population, but the public has always been more willing to register than vote.  Since universal suffrage elections were introduced in the early 1980s, turnout rates have rarely exceeded 50% of those registered.

DAMAGE CONTROL:  A Mock Chief Executive Election Campaign

           Radical people-power activism and its rising young stars have dominated political headlines for most of the past year but attention now is refocusing on the Democratic Party.  Its once formidable election machine, built in the 1990s, may be battered and bruised but the successors to founding fathers Martin Lee and Szeto Wah are once again preparing their troops for battle.  Leaders Albert Ho, Emily Lau, and the others are reminding everyone that whatever its failings, among pan-democrats their party still occupies the largest number of elected council seats  –  8 legislators and 52 District Councilors  –  and all aim to defend their incumbent advantages as best they can.

           After keeping the lowest of profiles during this year’s big June Fourth and July First demonstrations and the revelations about Szeto Wah’s early pro-communist leanings, party leaders are now reemerging to polish their populist credentials tarnished during last year’s campaigns.  Just as the pro-Beijing analyst predicted:  since others are now setting the pace, Democratic Party leaders will have to adapt to the expanding arena those others have created or forfeit the party’s weakened claim to leadership among pan-democrats as a whole (June 14  post).   The decision to join the Chief Executive election contest was calculated accordingly.  So too was the decision to try and stage a mock primary election beforehand.  

          Discussing those decisions last spring before they were made, party vice chairman Sin Chung-kai recalled that in 2007, the then newly formed Civic Party had put forward a candidate and raised its public profile in the process.  His party now wanted to assume the “dragon’s head” role, he said, and take the lead among pan-democrats by sponsoring a candidate.  Chairman Albert Ho has volunteered to carry the dragon’s banner. 

          The whole exercise is, of course, a formality.  Without Beijing’s endorsement, no candidate can win a majority of votes from the conservative Election Committee.  Everyone is nevertheless welcome to try if they can obtain enough nomination signatures from committee members.  Their total number has just been increased from 800 to 1,200 but the proportion of nominating endorsements remains the same.  The required number now is 150 sponsors among the 1,200 committee members.   Given the conservative design of its constituencies, few pro-democracy sympathizers can win seats on the committee. It follows that aspiring pro-democracy candidates for Chief Executive are hard-pressed even to obtain the necessary number of committee nominations much less prevail on Election Day.   In 2007, the 800-member committee provided Civic Party candidate Alan Leong with more nominations than actual Election Day votes (132 nominations; 123 votes).

          The idea of joining the selection process was not new even in 2007 and has always been controversial among pan-democrats because their participation in a contest they cannot win lends credence and legitimacy to an arrangement they oppose.  On the other hand, besides providing them with extra publicity, their participation also highlights the scheme’s rubber-stamp routines and advertizes them to a wider public that has no role in the selection process.

         The Democratic Party’s latest idea of adding a popular mock primary carries that argument a step further.  They are proposing to sponsor voting by iPad computer tablets at hundreds of street corner voting “booths” to be set up around town.   The aim is to give all Hong Kong residents (not just the registered voters among them) a virtual opportunity to choose from a list of candidates who will hopefully emerge.  Whether anyone else will want to join an exercise designed to popularize Albert Ho’s candidacy and bolster his party’s appeal remains to be seen.  The aim, he says, is to prepare the public for 2017 when, according to Beijing’s promise, Hong Kong can elect its Chief Executive via universal suffrage.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

           Whatever the benefits, not everyone agrees and another party vice chair, Emily Lau, is burnishing her image by saying so.  Instead of defying her base and daring the public to accept her changed stand as she did last year over the political reform package, Lau used her old voice to blast the whole Chief Executive selection process.   In a recent broadcast statement she explained that she had never approved of democrats participating in what she regarded as an illegitimate exercise and her views on the subject remain unchanged.  Having joined the Democratic Party she would respect its decision, but reserve her right to differ openly.  The “never ending struggle for democracy” must continue, she said, and we must state clearly that “only the person handpicked by Beijing and the tycoons will win.”

          She then went on to denounce the current list of front runners among the “real” (pro-establishment) candidates, that is, the three most-frequently mentioned although no one has yet formally declared their intentions.  They are, in order of popularity according to opinion polls:  Rita Fan, one-time colonial official, now Hong Kong’s representative on the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; Chief Secretary for Administration Henry Tang, in effect the current deputy Chief Executive who is being groomed to succeed Donald Tsang; and pro-business pro-Beijing Executive Councilor Leung Chun-ying.  Said Emily Lau:  “What the three have in common is that they will do what they are told by the central government and they are not willing to stand up for the rights of the Hong Kong people.”*   Gone are last year’s comments about the Democratic Party’s shrinking base and its new shift to the moderate center — gone at least for now.

ANOTHER DISTRICT-LEVEL DISASTER IN THE MAKING?

          Costs and benefits aside, contesting the Chief Executive election is just for show.  The District Councils are for real and the omens for pan-democrats are not good.  These councils, 18 in all, have a total of 400+ members, 80% of whom are directly elected.   One drawback at this level is an electorate divided into 400 small fragmented constituencies, each with only a few thousand voters.  These usually attract only two candidates who focus only on neighborhood amenities.  The government has promised to phase out the additional unelected councilors but when and how is not yet known.  These appointments have been used to reinforce the conservative pro-government tilt of all 18 councils, especially helpful when they are called upon to endorse controversial government policies like last year’s political reform package.

          Government appointees are the least of pan-democrats’ worries at this level, however.  The conservative tilt itself goes back to the councils’ beginnings, in the early 1980s, and barring a major redesign will be impossible to change.  The net result, as editorial writers are finally beginning to acknowledge openly, is that all the District Councils are now dominated by the pro-Beijing party and its densely organized ground game of well-funded conservative allies.  The party is the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), generally assumed to be a surrogate for the still unacknowledged local branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Pan-democrats have been complaining for a decade about their inability to mobilize comparable resources at the district level.  But the issue was allowed to slide because the councils were only advisory bodies and of no apparent political importance.  Now they are important given the government’s attempt to use District Councilors as mainland-style building blocks for indirect elections to the Legislative Council.

        Pan-democrats made some gains in 2003, by exploiting the momentum created during the national security protest movement.  But all the 2003 gains were wiped out in 2007 by a skillful DAB-orchestrated comeback strategy.  Democrats won elected majorities on only two councils with parity on one other.  Exact figures are difficult to calculate due to the large number of “independents,” most of whom are not independent of partisan loyalties.  The DAB alone won 115 seats; all pro-democracy parties combined captured only 93.   The latter then carried on as usual and sacrificed their one remaining council chairmanship on the altar of factional infighting.

         Will pan-democrats be able to stage a comeback of their own on November 6?  No one is optimistic about the Democratic Party’s ability to lead the way and a July 24 special election sent tremors of foreboding throughout the camp.  The election followed the death of a DP District Councilor last May.  In 2007, he won the seat with 1,777 votes to his pro-Beijing opponent’s 1,444.  On July 24, the vote count was DP candidate: 1,006 votes; pro-Beijing challenger: 2,086.

         The reason for so great a shift is not clear but DP strategists acknowledge that overall they are now under pressure from two sides, one known the other new.  The greatest threat will come from their traditional pro-Beijing pro-establishment rivals; the other lies within their own constituencies.  DP leaders worry that pro-democracy voters will remember last year’s threat to “teach them a lesson at the ballot box” for their compromise decision on political reform.  The party is nevertheless soldiering on with a plan to field about 125 candidates including 45 incumbents, roughly the same as in previous elections.  DP candidates won 53 seats in 2007.  Chairman Albert Ho has earned the nickname “Iron Head” for his stubborn defense of last year’s compromise and strategists say this year’s candidates will stand by that decision.

         Worries are underlined by the breakdown of the “coordination mechanism,” used since 2003 to discipline pro-democracy candidates and prevent factions from splitting the vote by running against each other.   Academic and Civic Party member Joseph Cheng is the unsung hero of this exercise and has successfully guided the tedious negotiations since 2003, to guarantee that there is only one democratic candidate per constituency.   This year six parties are participating. The DP will account for about half the total number of their anticipated 250 candidates. 

          The radical People Power group that split from the League of Social Democrats over this very issue is still refusing to go along with the others.  People Power leader, Wong Yuk-man, anticipates that about a third of his group’s 50-60 candidates will be challenging other pan-democrats especially the DP.  The LSD’s plans have yet to be announced; it was not one of the six coordinating parties.

          Candidate lists and platforms are still being finalized by all but pan-democrats are definitely the underdogs while their main antagonist is advancing like the purpose-built steam roller it has become.  Democrats began candidate coordination after 2003 and the DAB began a recruiting drive.  Membership grew from 2,000 to 10,000 between 2005 and 2007, and now stands at 20,000, replicating its mass-based CCP mentor.  The Democratic Party currently has only about 770 members.

          DAB candidates in November will number around 200.  Fund-raising is no problem.  Neither is discipline.  DAB members and candidates never quarrel in public.  They also never discuss the institutional details of their party’s mainland ties.   All candidates will contest their seats, as usual, on the basis of the party’s record in providing more services to constituents than pan-democrats can even dream of offering.  Also never discussed is the DAB’s strategy of coordinating its own candidate lists and campaign platform with like-minded groups that never acknowledge their political affiliations.  At this level, among neighbors, everyone likes to invoke the old conservative colonial mantra about comfort, harmony, and the average person’s aversion to discordant partisan politics. 

            For pan-democrats, the only real chance of blocking the DAB’s advance in November is, ironically, the 2010 political reform compromise that has split their movement.  This is because the reform has officially politicized the District Councils by trying to turn them into the stepping stones of a mainland-style indirectly-elected CCP-controlled people’s congress system.  As a result, it will be far more difficult this year for the DAB’s District Council candidates to maintain their a-political service-provider-only innocence since the Democratic Party can only hope to boost its flagging popularity by advertising the one advantage it secured from last year’s political reform compromise.

            Instead of letting the 400+ District Councilors elect five new legislators from among their own number, as the government and the DAB were initially proposing last year, all registered voters will now be able to vote for or against the candidates.  District Councilors will still do the nominating and the candidates must be District Councilors. But the public will be able to “learn by doing” what was never clearly explained last year.  If voters do not want to see five DAB-affiliated legislators filling those five new Legislative Council seats, voters will first need to elect pro-democracy District Council candidates rather than those from a party that can afford full-time paid staffers who organize the best special-price lunches and weekend diversions.

 * http://programme.rthk.org.hk/channel/radio/, Aug. 7, 2011.  According to a South China Morning Post-commissioned Hong Kong University-conducted opinion poll, the popularity ranking of the three leading contenders in June was:  Fan, 33%;  Tang, 10%;  Leung, 8 %;  others plus don’t knows, 48% (SCMP, July 3; Xin bao/HK Economic Journal, July 12).

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            History inevitably belongs not to the past but to the future and the perspectives that come with it.    Let history be the judge, say official Chinese commentators, when someone asks an awkward question about June 4, 1989.  Hong Kong’s Democratic Party leaders said the same thing last year when trying to defend their compromise decision on political reform:  history will vindicate us.  But no one in the party was prepared for the speed with which history began re-shaping the image of one of its founding fathers and the icon of Hong Kong’s democracy movement. 

             Following his death on January 2^nd this year, Szeto Wah [Situ Hua司徒華] was eulogized by all as a leading symbol of local determination to keep one-party communist dictatorship at bay after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997  (Jan. 7 post).  Toward that end he refused to abandon the annual candlelight vigil and infuriated Chinese leaders by recalling each year their use of armed force against demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989.  That event marked the end of China’s own nascent 1980s democracy movement and the beginning of Beijing’s overt antagonism to its Hong Kong counterpart.

            Immediately after his death, a small storm of controversy blew up over the question of publishing his life story.   Uncle Wah, as he was known, had promised his political friends and followers when he retired from the Legislative Council in 2004 that he would finish his memoirs within a year.   But one year passed and then another, and then he was diagnosed with lung cancer in late 2009.   More months passed while pan-democrats were battling over the universal suffrage campaign during 2009/10, and preparing for the summer’s June Fourth and July First events, all of which he participated in.  Only a few months later, as his health worsened, did the minds of those closest to him finally focus on the urgency of remembering, recording, and writing.   Soon after his death, Ming Pao Daily News (Jan. 4-9) printed a series of articles based on the resulting sickbed recollections as told to friends and colleagues, and the materials he had authorized for release.  Also based on the interviews, a five-part television documentary was broadcast during the week following his death and a draft of the long-promised book was reportedly being prepared as well.   The mourning period had barely begun, however, when a younger brother, Szeto Keung [Situ Qiang 司徒強], startled everyone by announcing that all publication rights belonged to him. 

           Unwilling to create an issue, Szeto Wah’s political heirs  –  in the Professional Teachers’ Union, Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, and the Democratic Party  –  stood aside.   They said only that any publication the family might sponsor could not, by definition, be called a memoire (hui yi lu), because the subject had died without actually writing one. They said their logic stemmed from Szeto himself who had rejected all suggestions to tell his story to others with more disciplined writing skills.  If he intended his relatives to take full charge he seems to have told no one else.   Undeterred, the family went to work and the result is The Great River Runs Ever Eastward: Szeto Wah’s Memoirs, announced with much family-focused publicity and a big splash at this year’s July book fair.* 

FAMILY CONNECTIONS

            Why the political heirs did not merit even the courtesy of an advance copy is not clear but the cause for general consternation is.  Szeto Wah’s political origins lie, just as the old colonial rumors always had it, within Hong Kong’s leftist patriotic community.   In claiming first publication rights his family aims to establish those origins as part of his legacy in a definitive way that the political heirs could not have done even had they been so inclined because they were evidently not privy to the details.

             The driving force behind publication was Szeto Keung and a sister, Szeto Sim [Situ Shan司徒嬋], two of  Szeto Wah’s  six surviving  siblings.   Brother Keung was a lifelong communist at least until his retirement, in the mid-1990s, as deputy head of the external affairs section at the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency (NCNA).  The branch was Beijing’s de facto official representative office here until 1997 and was succeeded by the central government’s Liaison Office.   Sister Sim worked at the local branch of Beijing’s China News Agency for three decades, from the early 1960s until her retirement in 1992.  Because of his position, and unlike most other NCNA officials, Szeto Keung was well-known to Hong Kong-based diplomats and foreign correspondents.  In earlier decades the two men, when asked, always denied any connection between them despite the obvious family resemblance.  

          After 1997, however, Szeto Keung became increasingly forthright in expressing admiration for the pro-democracy work of his brother saying only that political “sensitivities” had kept their public lives separate.  We are proud of what he has done, Szeto Keung told journalists in response to the rush of questions about the memoirs, and our intention is not to discredit his memory.   Sister Sin is more forthright.  We respect his courage in confronting political contradictions, she says.   “Really, what are you all afraid of,” she asked one questioner with reference to the heretofore unknown leftist resume they had revealed (Xinbao/Hong Kong Economic Journal, July 13, www.hkej.com ).

           They say the book is based primarily on tape recordings made by Szeto Wah in 1996, just before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty, plus the TV documentary, and also on drafts he himself wrote.  But they are presenting the material as his will and claim he did not want to allow anyone else access to the tapes.  In Hong Kong’s still divided community –  where the majority, represented by Szeto Wah’s political heirs has little to do with the patriotic world his family inhabits  –  their sudden emergence as custodians of his political memory has naturally raised a flurry of suspicions and awkward questions.

           The pro-Beijing press has blocked all mention of the book as befits its subject who has been regarded by Beijing as a subversive element since 1989 and banned from travelling in China.  His political heirs, embarrassed at  being sidelined in so public a way, have avoided comment and want to hear the tapes for themselves.  Everyone else is busily tapping every conceivable source in an effort to corroborate and verify.

RE-SHAPING THE LEGACY

          When Szeto Wah promised to finish his memoirs a few years ago, everyone was looking forward especially to what he might reveal about June 4, 1989 and the secret operation, code named Yellow Bird,  he helped organize to smuggle protest leaders out of China afterward.  That experience is recounted in detail but has now been overshadowed by the revelations about his own leftist past. 

            The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) emerged victorious from the 1945-49 civil war and Szeto’s early enthusiasm for the new China was never a secret.  Born in 1931, he moved with his family to Hong Kong during the 1941-45 Japanese occupation. He was involved with a left-leaning youth club during his student days and the early years of his career as an elementary school teacher.  After leading a teachers’ strike in 1973 and organizing the union a year later, he continued to portray mainland China in positive terms.  Such sentiments naturally aroused the suspicions of British security, but according to one internal assessment leaked in the early 1980s, they concluded that his independent character would keep the union safe from communist infiltration (Jan. 7 post).  The memoirs provide heretofore unknown details, filling in some of the blanks left by this familiar sketch.

           Besides the youth club, his early political life included membership in the Hong Kong branch of the national New Democracy Youth League, which he joined in 1949.  He was one of the club’s leaders and it was part of the league’s unannounced united front activities.  Once the new mainland regime was fully established and its main class enemies expropriated, the “new democracy” phase gave way to overt one-party rule.   Accordingly, the party’s youth organization was renamed the Communist Youth League in 1957.  Its existence in Hong Kong was secret and part of what is still known today as the CCP’s “underground” unacknowledged presence here.

          More controversial is the revelation that in 1966, after reaching the upper age limit of 35 for League membership, Szeto indicated his interest in following the usual progressive route upward by joining the CCP itself.  But the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution disrupted organization life both in Hong Kong and on the mainland resulting in the suicide, in Shanghai, of his main Hong Kong NCNA contact.  Factional differences had resulted in Szeto’s departure from the youth club in 1960, his 1966 initiative lapsed, and he felt himself abandoned by the party.

          Later, in the 1980s when Hong Kong and Beijing began planning for 1997 reunification, union leader Szeto met regularly with NCNA officials, which was not unusual.  They were just then “coming out” themselves, getting to know local leaders from many circles in preparation for 1997.  According to Szeto’s memoirs, however, he reported his interest in contesting the first, indirect, 1985 Legislative Council election to his new NCNA contacts and received their support.  He claims further that they included him among possible candidates for the post of Hong Kong’s first post-1997 Chief Executive.  He was also asked at that time, by NCNA director Xu Jiatun  [許家屯], to join the CCP but turned down the offer.

           In his own memoirs, published in the early 1990s, Xu wrote that Szeto had once asked to join the party but told Xu he had changed his mind after reading the works of party leader Chen Yun.**  These were published in the mid-1980s.  Szeto explains the Chen Yun anecdote along with the real reason he turned down the offer, namely, the way he had earlier been shunted aside by the party without explanation (River, pp. 101-4).

             Szeto then severed all links secret and otherwise with mainland representatives in 1989 and the story resumes its more familiar course.  Why he would be content to leave the impression that the only reason he refused to join the party in the mid-1980s was his own personal experience is not clear.  His family has reiterated this reason for his disaffection in their public statements, leaving readers to speculate about how he might have reacted to Tiananmen had he been treated with the respect he thought he deserved.  Would he have defected to America like his would-be sponsor Xu Jiatun did after 1989?  Or would he have fallen in behind the post-crackdown order along with most other members of Hong Kong’s patriotic community including his own relations?

            Szeto Wah says only that his youthful belief in communism gave way to a new set of convictions.  He then goes on to state his understanding of democracy in terms that have set Hong Kong’s pro-democracy partisans apart from their pro-Beijing opponents since Szeto himself began campaigning, also in the mid-1980s, for:  the right to universal suffrage and the right of everyone to elect a government of their own choosing but one that will guarantee freedom, human rights, and the rule of law.

             Along with his new convictions, he also maintained his fighting spirit to the end.  Lest anyone think that his last “I love everyone” posthumous New Year’s message meant all was forgiven, the book ends on the same discordant note that marked his final appearance at last year’s July First march.  The chapter titled “Who Betrayed Hong Kong’s Democracy?” is an answer to the bannered questions dominating that march.  He provides a robust defense of the 2010 compromise on political reform and proclaims Albert Ho to be “the best chairman the Democratic Party ever had” for making the compromise decision.

          Responding to a journalist’s question, one family member said he thought the knowledge that his uncle was a man with a pro-Beijing past  would probably not have much of a negative impact on his current pro-democracy image.  Probably the memoirs will have a greater impact on the younger brother’s reputation for the way he elbowed aside Szeto Wah’s political heirs — much as the party had done to him all those years ago.   But the 500-page book will take some time to absorb.  It has only just gone on sale and the authenticity of the tapes, as well as his deathbed instructions about revealing their contents, remain to be verified.  No doubt the best of the responses are yet to come.

*Dajiang dong qu:  Situ Hua huiyilu [大江東去：司徒華囘憶錄].  Hong Kong:  Oxford University Press, in Chinese, English forthcoming eventually.

** Xu Jiatun,  Xianggang huiyilu (Hong Kong Memoirs), vol. I, pp. 149-50, in Chinese only.  

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   (July 5 update posted below)       

                 Two dates stand out on the calendar of Hong Kong’s democracy movement.  One symbolizes its defiance of the central government in Beijing and this year’s June Fourth candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown was one of the largest ever (June 14 post).   The July First march is a newer tradition dating back only to 2003 when half-a-million people from all walks of life took to the streets in protest.   The main issue that year was the local government’s ham-handed attempt to force through national security legislation as mandated by Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law constitution.  But it was more like the straw that finally broke the camel’s back since dissatisfaction with the administration of Hong Kong’s first post-British Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had been building since 1997.  July First is a public holiday in honor of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.

        Another big march in 2004 followed Beijing’s intervention to preempt demands for a faster pace of political reform and the July First holiday tradition has grown accordingly, into a festival of protest targeting the local government over the most pressing political issues of the day.  Since 2003 the annual march has been orchestrated, with infinite patience, by a coalition of 40+ pro-democracy action groups and politicians known as the Civil Human Rights Front.   The common themes that all finally agreed on this year followed from recent protests.   The three main themes:   (1) protest the refusal to grant universal suffrage elections in 2012;  (2) oppose property-developer hegemony;  (3) demand the resignation of Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

            Inevitably, all those who want to participate cannot easily agree on the main themes that all must accept as a condition for joining the march.  This year the Democratic Party prevaricated on the universal suffrage theme, arguing that it was no longer an issue.  They also did not like the anti-Donald Tsang slogan.  But since many participants still bear the Democratic Party a serious grudge for having brokered the 2010 political reform deal that formally buried the 2012 dream, party leaders had no choice but accept the theme or drop out of the march –  a risk they dared not take in an election year.   

LAST YEAR’S REFERENDUM:  THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES BACK   

            At least those were the arrangements for July First before the government announced its latest bright idea, seemingly oblivious to the consequences of handing organizers so perfect a gift so close to the July First protest march.  Perhaps the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau hoped to exacerbate the radical-moderate split that has divided pan-democrats since last year’s political reform and referendum campaigns.  But if so, the authorities miscalculated again. 

           Democrats immediately united as one in opposition to the government’s snap announcement of a new plan to abolish special or by-elections for Legislative Council seats that fall vacant mid-term.  The declared aim is to prevent legislators from repeating last year’s maneuver whereby they resigned en masse triggering what then became a territory-wide special election, with democrats campaigning on the single issue of their long-standing demand for universal suffrage elections.   In this way they were able to force a universal suffrage election on their own initiative without government approval, which infuriated Beijing authorities if their rhetoric last year was any indication (May 17, 2010 post).  Whether they were behind the government’s latest move is not known, but local pro-Beijing politicians and conservatives had raised such a demand and Chief Executive Donald Tsang obviously felt he had to comply.

         In May, a year almost to the day after the May 16, 2010 referendum, Constitutional Affairs Bureau chief Stephen Lam Sui-lung [Lin Ruilin 林 瑞 麟], introduced the new plan.  He said it had to be approved by the Legislative Council before the coming summer recess, scheduled to begin after the July 13 meeting, in order to have all arrangements in place ahead of the 2011/12 election cycle.   The plan would abolish by-elections for the Legislative Council regardless of the reason for a seat falling vacant.  Instead of an election, the seat would be filled automatically by the candidate who topped the list of the previous election’s losers, in terms of the number of votes won within the district. 

            Hong Kong is divided into five districts for Legislative Council elections and votes are calculated as a proportion of those cast within each district.  In a four-seat district, the winning candidates are declared with 25% of all votes cast.  When a candidate receives more than 25%, the “excess” votes are transferred to the next person on that candidate’s list, if he/she has such “running mates.”  If not, the excess votes are “lost.”    All remaining seats in the district are filled according to whoever receives the most votes, including those won directly plus any transferred remainder votes.  If no candidate wins 25% in a district, all victors are decided simply by the number of votes won.  According to the government’s plan, a candidate unrelated politically to the person vacating the seat could become its new occupant.  A pro-Beijing person could inherit the seat vacated by a democrat and vice versa.

           A hue and cry went up immediately.   Even some conservative politicians complained on grounds they had not been consulted beforehand.  In fact, the risks for all non-democrats would be greater since pan-democrats routinely win 60% of the popular vote in all five districts.  For example, the first runner-up in all but one district was a democrat in the last, 2008, election.  But pan-democrats were left to mobilize the opposition on their own.  They called for a delay and public consultation, denied on grounds that all rules and regulations had to be in place ahead of the coming cycle scheduled to begin with the District Councils election in early November. 

          Democratic legislators then tried to block the proposal as it sped through the Legislative Council’s bills and house committees.  Concerned academics organized a petition that was signed by those who had supported the referendum and those who had not.  Lawyers also spoke out.  The Bar Association issued several statements declaring that the plan violated the Basic Law by tampering with the right to vote.  The more moderate Law Society issued a similar statement.  Government officials argued in response that the Basic Law does not mention by-elections so the authorities could improvise as they liked.  Since democratic legislators are outnumbered on the committees, the proposal was quickly cleared for a vote in the full Legislative Council where it was expected to pass since the council is designed in such a way as to keep democrats perpetually outnumbered there as well.  With no other options, democratic legislators could only raise their familiar rallying cry when all else fails:  “to-the-streets!”   

              The July First march had a new cause but it was left to Legislator Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee [Ye Liu Shuyi 葉劉淑儀] to raise the specter of 2003.  She was then Secretary for Security and led the government’s ill-fated campaign to push through the offending national security legislation.  After beating a hasty retreat to Stanford University where she spent three years studying politics, Regina Ip returned to Hong Kong with a new persona and has since carved out a niche for herself as a conservative elected politician (Feb. 14, 2011 post).  She reminded Donald Tsang of the danger he was risking by trying to force through so contentious a proposal without adequate public consultation.  Her boss, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, had done the same thing in 2003.  The proposed national security legislation was far more complicated than the by-election proposal.  But between September 2002 and July 2003 she had tried to push the legislation through over widespread legal and academic objections and demands for a longer public consultation period  (Apple Daily, June 23, 2011).

          Someone did heed the warning.  According to media reports, it came from Beijing’s Hong Kong liaison office and on June 28, Stephen Lam offered a compromise.  Instead of allowing the first overall runner up within a district to fill a vacated Legislative Council seat, it could remain within the same political family.  The next person on the original winner’s party list could succeed the departed legislator, regardless of how many votes that list had won.  No solution at all, replied pan-democrats, who called on citizens to rally for a repeat of 2003.

REUNIFICATION DAY, 2011

         Hopes are high after the largest turnout since 2003/4.   March organizers estimated 200,000+.  The police outdid themselves with a claim of only 50,000  –  perhaps reflecting chagrin following their increased efforts to circumscribe the event with tedious new restrictions most of which were either negotiated away by the organizers or ignored by participants.

          As usual, Civil Human Rights Front leaders deserve to take a bow  for their diplomatic skills since they ultimately made a place for everyone and everyone remained in their places from start to finish.  The march took seven hours to complete, from 3:00 p.m. when the lead units moved out of Victoria Park until the last group reached government headquarters downtown.    

         Front leaders not only held their ground with the police but with everyone else as well.   The original three main radical themes led the march with a jasmine flower motif as an added mark of defiance.  But several other themes were featured as well, chief among them being the government’s by-elections proposal.  Each participating group could then focus on the concerns that mattered most to its members including both political and economic livelihood issues.  Many people also just came alone or with family members and a few friends.   Everyone brought their own props and placards  –  colorful, creative, and above all irreverent.   Stephen Lam, Chief Executive Donald Tsang, Tycoon Li Ka-shing, and Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho were favorite targets.  Caricatures of Lam, the quintessential bureaucrat, had onlookers and participants laughing all along the route.

          Albert Ho said during a recent speech that last year’s July First march was “the worst experience of my entire life.”  He was referring to the gauntlet of vilification his Democratic Party contingent had to endure throughout the march following his compromise on the 2010 political reform package.   This year they tried to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible by dividing their ranks in a way which also allowed them to avoid direct association with the radical lead themes.  Ho, Emily Lau, and a few others carried the party’s main protest banner opposing the by-election replacement proposal.  But this group carried no Democratic Party flags, leaving these to an equally small contingent of less controversial members further back along the line of march.

         In contrast, the radical contingents of the once unified League of Social Democrats and People Power factions were by far the most prominent and numerous, with thousands of marchers carrying hundreds of flags all proudly proclaiming who they were.  But as expected, it was also members of these two groups who refused to disperse at the end of the day when over 200 were arrested for blocking traffic and unruly behavior.  The three main radical leaders, Raymond Wong, Andrew To, and “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung  –  all experienced hands in dealing with law enforcement  –   spent the rest of the night helping their colleagues arrange bail and negotiate police procedures.

          This was the first march since 2003 with a specific immediate demand in addition to all the associated themes and slogans.   And 2003 is being invoked in all respects.  Pan-democrats are even planning to surround the Legislative Council building on July 13, the day the vote on the by-election proposal is due to take place, just as demonstrators had planned to do in July 2003.  The event then turned into a victory celebration after pro-business Liberal Party legislators succumbed to public pressure and withdrew their support for the national security bill.

         Liberal Party legislators and other conservatives now find themselves in the spotlight once more as democrats try to muster a majority to kill the by-election replacement bill.  Only six more votes are needed.  The line-up, as of July 4, is:  24 solid votes against the proposal (23 democrats plus one independent); 19 pro-Beijing and conservative legislators pledged to support; 16, all conservative Functional Constituency legislators, still undeclared.  The legislator who acts as council president does not vote and the proposal does not require a super two-thirds majority to pass. 

UPDATE, JULY 5.    People power to the rescue once again.  After another robust defense of their by-election replacement proposal yesterday morning, July 4, Hong Kong government officials announced at an afternoon press conference that they had changed their minds.  The proposal did not need to be pushed through on July 13 after all.  This followed a meeting with 21 pro-government legislators who advised caution.  A two-month public consultation will therefore be held in July and August.  The proposal will then be re-tabled during the 2011-12 legislative year.  Officials refused to acknowledge that their U-turn had anything to do with the big July First turnout.   They also insisted that the proposal must eventually be passed to prevent legislators from staging elections on their own initiative.

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         Probably the best way of reconciling the contradictions in Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho’s political thinking (June 1 post) is not to try.  This is because Hong Kong’s democracy movement has been reinvigorated in recent years by an influx of young people who are moving on and leaving him to adapt or not as best he can.  In any case, the concerns about “revolutionary-type mass movements” that featured in his May manifesto seemed the last thing on anyone’s mind as another huge crowed gathered for the candlelight vigil commemorating Beijing’s June Fourth crackdown that put an end to China’s own democracy movement in 1989.  The Hong Kong event has been held annually in Victoria Part for the past 22 years, making this the only place in China were public commemoration is allowed. 

SOME JUNE FOURTH CONTRADICTIONS

           One difference to note by comparison with years past is the size of the crowd.   Attendance last year was unprecedented as something like 150,000 people turned out in unspoken tribute to the terminally ill Szeto Wah, who had insisted on keeping the event alive even as attendance fell below 50,000 and the resolve of others faltered.  Mr. Szeto passed away in January.  But this year, there was no special reason to explain the equally large turnout except for the steady stream of consciousness-raising political debates and controversies  –  both here and elsewhere, in both the Chinese and non-Chinese worlds.   The police also seemed to defer to last year’s special circumstances by allowing their estimate (113,000) to reflect that of vigil organizers (150,000).  This year, the police reverted to their habit of underestimating by about half what experienced observation indicates.   But the spillover crowd filled all the soccer pitches that accommodate 80,000, plus close to that same number in all the same empty park spaces and side streets just like last year.

          Perhaps the Democratic Party’s new-found concern about revolutionary-type mass movements was responsible for moving the most “subversive” anti-communist slogans and banners off center stage.  But they were all still there somewhere including the controversial “end one-party dictatorship,” and center stage was provocative enough with its giant demand to “reverse the verdict on June Fourth; build democracy.”    Yesteryear’s firebrand, Emily Lau, could not resist a daring photo-op pose beneath the banner calling on heaven to “destroy the Chinese communists” (Apple Daily, June 6).  Lau is now, since 2008, a DP vice chair and many have yet to forgive her sudden about-face on last year’s political reform package.

        Along with the increasing number of young people in attendance was the increasing number of mainland visitors.  Preliminary estimates by Hong Kong University pollsters suggest that the 15-30 age group accounted for over half those attending this year’s vigil.  Last year they were estimated at 40-50%.  As for mainlanders, the only way of estimating their numbers is by examining the contents of the fund-raising money boxes afterward.  Vigil organizers say they collected HK$1.3 million, which included RMB 16,000 in mainland currency, up from RMB 7,500 last year. 

         If Albert Ho wants any of these people to take seriously his puzzling new critique of revolutionary-type mass movements, he will have to do a much better job of reconciling his new ideas with the subversive June Fourth movement  that he and his friends have kept going since 1989.  All the main debates and controversies that have marked political life during the past year  –  both here and elsewhere –  have been about spontaneous popular resistance to authoritarian rule.  Since Ho continues to champion the goals of building democracy in Hong Kong and on the mainland, a goal that Beijing continues to regard as subversive of its authority, he needs to explain how those goals can be achieved without a popular protest movement.  In particular:  he needs to explain why it is O.K. when tens of thousands of Hong Kongers demonstrate under banners calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorial way of governing and suppressing mass protests; but it is not O.K. to agitate for local universal suffrage elections here just because Beijing regards them as contrary to its way of governing!

A TEN-POINT REBUTTAL

           Political critic  Wong Ngon-yin (Wang Anran  王岸然) used much sharper language.   He said Albert Ho’s political manifesto was “shameless” on 10 counts and lamented such thinking from the leader of what is still Hong Kong’s most influential pro-democracy political party.  Among pan-democrats, the Democratic Party occupies the largest number of seats in Hong Kong’s legislative and district councils.  Ho’s essay was published in Ming Pao Daily News, May 10, 11, 12.  Wong’s critique appeared in the Chinese-language Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 18.

        In Wong’s view, the 10 counts add up to a prescription for indefinite surrender.  Otherwise, why use the old feudal concept of an encircled city with a politically apathetic population that will cold-shoulder “revolutionary-type” political reform?  Wong calls this a sell-out to the pro-Beijing line.  Point four on his shameless index blames Albert Ho for invoking the specter of mass movement violence (when Hong Kong’s own democracy movement has been totally devoid of violence).  Point five targets his casual dismissal of the Middle Eastern jasmine revolutions because they anticipate the rise of new dictatorships, “pouring old wine into new bottles.”  Point six concerns Ho’s misreading of Hong Kong’s new post-80s youth protests and increasing civil society activism  –  confusing this direct political participation with some sort of revolutionary takeover-from-below.

        Next, Wong cites Ho’s failure to check the facts before drafting a sketch of Hong Kong’s colonial history that is skewered to serve his political argument.  But misrepresenting the past pales, in Wong’s view, beside Ho’s use of mainland terminology to characterize Hong Kong as an anti-communist base because anti-communist opinions are openly expressed here.  Ho accepts Beijing’s logic without argument, citing his own June Fourth movement as a source of such anti-communist opinion, and commending Beijing’s tolerance.   The aim of such thinking and the bargain Ho struck over political reform last year must be to abandon the struggle for democracy in favor of long-term accommodation with autocrats, at the expense of Hong Kong’s popular movement.   Finally, Wong marvels at Ho’s confidence in making all these points  –  without a word of doubt, introspection, or qualification.

         Perhaps because of this critique, when Albert Ho presented the same ideas in English at Baptist University on May 31, he emphasized his commitment to carry forward the struggle for democracy along multiple fronts.  He also avoided using the mainland term “masses,” and referred to them in the Hong Kong way as people, citizens, voters, and so on.  The case against mass movements that featured in his manifesto (and read like it was written by one of the mainland scholars with whom he said he remains in contact) was also absent from his presentation.   But he repeated the encirclement analogy, expanding on Hong Kong’s historic role as a place of refuge from the dangers of mainland political life.  That experience, he said, had created a tradition of political avoidance shared by the population as a whole.

        This is the old British and conservative Chinese fall-back excuse for not introducing political reforms here throughout most of Hong Kong’s colonial history.  Beijing adopted this argument, citing it repeatedly during the 1990s to explain why Albert Ho and his new activist friends were out-of-step with politically apathetic mainstream society.  Yet Ho not only persists with this argument but anticipates that his party will be rewarded during the coming elections for trying to appeal to these conservative popular instincts in ways its previous message has failed to do.

         During the past year, individual Democratic Party members have also rationalized Albert Ho’s political reform compromise in this way and described their aim of political realignment in similar terms.  Ho’s manifesto reaffirms those off-the-cuff explanations more systematically for presentation to the public at large.  It follows that he is also trying to reorient Hong Kong’s democracy movement, or at least his party’s version thereof, in a way that will make it more acceptable to Beijing.

PRO-BEIJING RESPONSES

         Whether Albert Ho succeeds in raising his party’s profile among the “masses” remains for the 2011/12 elections to decide.  What Beijing thinks of his efforts also remains to be seen.  Local “traditional leftists” have always thought he was “alright,” as democrats go, because of his patriotic attachment to many nationalistic causes.  They still say so among themselves.   But in public and in print, they are not convinced.

         Pro-Beijing commentator Lau Nai-keung (Liu Naiqiang  劉廼強) knows Albert Ho well.  Their political lives began together at the same point, in the early 1980s, when both were part of Hong Kong’s nascent democracy movement.  But Lau soon turned against the idea of Western-style democracy and became one of the few early activists who crossed over to the other side.  If anyone could recognize a genuine conversion, it would be Lau but he sees no such thing.   He mocked Ho’s great work calling it an anti-communist tract and the best that could be expected from the “dragon’s head” or lead organization among what leftists call the “opposition” pro-democracy parties.

        Like Wong Ngon-yin, Lau highlighted Ho’s assertion that since 1997, China had been especially tolerant and avoided interfering in Hong Kong.  But unlike Wong who scoffed at Ho’s acceptance of the official Beijing line about non-interference, Lau targeted Ho’s double standards:  Beijing is not supposed to interfere in Hong Kong, but he still thinks Hong Kong can become a model for building democracy in China.   At least, wrote Lau, Ho has finally acknowledged the Democratic Party’s secret mission:  they really do plan to use Hong Kong as a base for turning China upside down (Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 31).

         Although he did not mention Ho’s manifesto directly, pro-Beijing writer Zhou Bajun (周八駿), also dismissed the Democratic Party’s attempt at political realignment.  Why did the Democratic Party’s approval ratings go up last year?   Because, said Zhou repeating official interpretations, the party had dared to compromise for the sake of promoting democratic political reform.  Now, less than a year later, its approval rating had fallen from 15% to 8%.  Why?   Because the party’s realignment was not genuine.   Albert Ho’s political reform compromise was only a tactical ploy, not a strategic shift.  The party’s basic standpoint and orientation toward Beijing has not changed.  This was demonstrated by the Nobel Peace Prize (awarded to mainland dissident Liu Xiaobo).  The Democratic Party joined with all other pan-democrats in celebrating the award and joined them on other issues as well.  

         Zhou then moved beyond official spin to explain the Democratic Party’s difficulty in locating a new “moderate” middle ground.  The party remains the most influential of all the pan-democratic groups and factions but the others  –  the Civic Party, League of Social Democrats, People Power, New Democratic Alliance  –  are now setting the pace.  The Democratic Party cannot move too far from the others without losing even more of its waning influence to their growing strength.   As it faces the coming elections, concluded Zhou, the Democratic Party must strive both to consolidate its fractured internal ranks and expand its constituency externally.  Party leaders will not be able to stray too far from the political line and tactics of the movement as a whole if they hope to maintain their dominant position within it (Wen Wei Po [Wenhui bao], May 19).

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