European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso
The European Union has welcomed the recent steps taken by Hong Kong towards introducing universal suffrage for the chief executive’s election in 2017.
In a statement, the European Union External Action service assures that the “EU welcomes the start of the five-step process which will lead to the introduction of universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive in 2017.”
Furthermore, the EU intends to follow the process closely, and “is looking forward to the forging of an ambitious consensus among the parties involved, within the framework of ‘one country, two systems’.”
Hong Kong took a further step towards political reform last week, when it submitted a report to Beijing regarding the prospect of universal suffrage in the HKSAR.
Hong Kong’s chief executive, C.Y. Leung, said that every eligible citizen should be entitled to cast a vote for the next leader. Nevertheless, he recalled that the mainstream Hong Kong society has agreed with Beijing when it comes to the way the electoral reform should be conducted.
Beijing has already stated that Hong Kong will have the right to universal suffrage by 2017, but stipulated that the public will only vote from a list of pre-selected candidates chosen by a nominating committee.
However, activists claim that this is not a true democracy and that China might use the nominating committee to screen out candidates which are not pro-Beijing.
Last month, a total of 792,808 people took part in an official referendum on universal suffrage. On July 1, tens of thousands of people joined in a pro-democracy rally organized by the Occupy Central group.
In the second last sentence, the referendum was actually an ‘unofficial’ one.