By Eva Cheng
Pro-democracy forces won an impressive victory in Hong Kong's May 24 legislative council election, its first since the former British colony reintegrated with China almost a year ago. Beijing restricted the number of popularly elected seats, reserving most for business interests and pro-Beijing stooges.
Only 20 out of 60 seats were elected, based on five geographical constituencies. Pro-democracy forces won 15, with a record 53.29% turnout of the 2.8 million eligible voters (Hong Kong's population is 6 million). The turnout was almost double previous averages, in spite of a heavy downpour and widespread floods.
Pro-democracy candidates won five more seats from the 30 seats reserved for business sectors and professional groups, known as "functional" constituencies. The remaining 10 seats went, as designed, to Beijing's stooges — "elected" by a 800-member election committee, dominated by hand-picked members from Beijing's front bodies.
Within the pro-democracy camp, the Hong Kong Democratic Party reaped the biggest gains, and other liberal candidates — Emily Lau's the Frontiers and Christine Loh's Citizens' Party — also scored seats, together with non-affiliated figures and activists.
In the geographical constituencies, seats are allocated on a proportional representation basis, with three to five seats offered in each. The Democrats won two seats in four constituencies, capturing 40-56% of the vote. In the fifth constituency, the Democrats won one seat with 25.6% and the Frontiers won two seats with 30.8%. In Hong Kong's only two previous legislative elections which allowed an element of popular votes — 1991 and 1995 — candidates were elected on a first past the post basis.
A small socialist group, the Pioneer, stood one candidate in one geographical constituency on a progressive, though not distinctly socialist, program and received 968 votes (0.26%).
Those standing for the pro-democracy camp were primarily former popularly elected legislators who were ousted by Beijing last year when it imposed its hand-picked "provisional legislature" in violation of Hong Kong's post-colonial Basic Law.
The introduction of popular elections in 1991 for 18 of the 60 seats in Hong Kong's legislature, despite its undemocratic structure which favoured business interests, was a step forward. Britain's inclusion of "employees" in the functional constituencies in 1995 substantially extended the electoral base by 2.7 million. However, in this election Beijing hacked that back to 123,000 and retained corporate voting for some seats, making the "election" in some functional constituencies little more from horse-trading by narrow interest groups.
The system allows some business voters to have a much higher influence in the outcome than others. Some conglomerates have as many votes as the entire number of other businesses in a functional constituency.
Beijing also banned those with foreign citizenship from standing in the geographical constituencies, thus excluding critics who have secured the protection of foreign citizenship. However, this citizenship rule does not apply in the functional constituencies.
Pro-democracy forces campaigned for a legislature based entirely on popular votes. On election day, two groups — the Human Rights Alliance and April 5th Action — staged small separate demonstrations in support of that demand. According to Hong Kong's Basic Law, half of the legislative seats will be returned by popular votes only in 2004, while universal suffrage remains an "ultimate goal".