HONG KONG: Sham election of new chief executive

June 29, 2005
Issue 

Eva Cheng

Hong Kong's phoney election for a new chief executive took a farcical twist on June 16 when the legally required secret ballot was done away with, leaving no possibility for even isolated protest votes to be cast.

With strong endorsement from Beijing, Donald Tsang Yam-Kuen was selected by the election committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to serve the remaining two years left in the five-year term of HKSAR chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa.

Tsang served for 30 years in Hong Kong's pre-1997 British colonial administration and held a number of leading positions in Tung's post-1997 administration. Tung resigned in March, with Tsang replacing him as acting chief executive.

The next election for HKSAR chief executive for a full five-year term is due in 2007.

Despite an annex to the HKSAR Basic Law specifying that the "election committee shall, on the basis of the list of nominees, elect the chief executive designate by secret ballot on a one-person-one-vote basis", no such ballot was held after 674 members of the 796-member election committee, in an extraordinary manner, came forward on June 16 to nominate the same candidate — Tsang. That same day, the committee declared Tsang "elected" unopposed.

The electoral committee is made up of representatives of employer, professional, labour and religious organisations, plus members of the Legislative Council and the HKSAR delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament.

There were attempts by five other people to seek nomination for a ballot for the chief executive position, but none of them was able to get the backing of the required number of electoral committee members (100 each) to have their nominations placed on a ballot.

There thus seems to have been a concerted effort by Tsang's supporters to demonstrate, presumably to Beijing, that the Hong Kong political elite is overwhelmingly loyal to the Beijing regime and to whoever it wants to head the HKSAR administration.

In recent years there have been huge public demonstrations in favour of having the chief executive position elected by universal suffrage in 2007.

However, contrary to Beijing's pre-1997 promise to let the HKSAR runs its own affairs, in April 2004 the standing committee of the NPC ruled out the application of universal suffrage to both the 2007 election of the chief executive and the 2008 election of the Legislative Council.

Last September, the 60-member Legislative Council increased the number of legislators arising from a popular vote from 24 to 30.

Tsang emerged as Beijing's preferred successor to Tung in early June.

When Tsang handed in his candidacy application on June 15, pro-worker activist "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-Hung, who was elected a member of the Legislative Council last September, protested against the likely phoney election of Tsang. Leung was joined by other members of the April 5 Action group which has been active in supporting the democracy movement in China since the 1980s.

Police joined the security personnel at the electoral committee office trying to block Leung and other protesters as they tried, in front of media reporters, to presented Tsang with their message of protest.

The next day, when Tsang was declared the uncontested winner, Leung and other pro-democracy activists staged a follow-up protest.

Partly to attract media attention, Leung has a record of spicing his protests with witty stunts and props. He kept up this tradition even after becoming a legislator.

At the June 16 protest, he presented a piece of long shoe-shining cloth to Tsang, making clear that Tsang now has all the shoes to shine — boots to lick — of the 674 people who nominated him. The previous day, his prop included a black box, a yellow gown and a tortoise — to get across in the context of Chinese analogies that Tsang's "election" was a prearranged piece of theatre and that Tsang is a coward for running away from protesters.

On June 17, April 5 Action and another pro-democracy group issued an open letter to Tsang, demanding that he answer questions on 10 pressing social issues including the timetable for universal suffrage, his strategy to counter poverty, and his positions on the minimum wage, jobs for the low-skill workers, privatisation and public health care.

April 5 Action and many other groups in the Hong Kong People's Alliance for Human Rights plan to give Tsang "the finger" again on July 1, when a mass protest is planned. Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China on July 1, 1997, and on that day and every anniversary since, big protests have been held to press for more democracy in Hong Kong.

From Green Left Weekly, June 29, 2005.
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