HK Observer | Embers from the fire

Robert Carroll

The long road to the Basic Law’s objective of universal suffrage has just got a lot longer. Now that the Legislative Council (LegCo) has voted down the proposals to introduce a one person one vote system, it will take years to get to the point where the LegCo will once again have the option of voting yes to a universal suffrage scheme for electing the Chief Executive – followed by a similar process for universal suffrage for voting in the Council. On the one hand, a ‘yes’ vote last week should have ushered in a new era in more representative politics; on the other hand, many saw it as effectively closing the door on that possibility. What went wrong, and why are we left with burnt embers?
It has been clear for many years that the pan-democrat side, and their forerunners, were not going to achieve their goals, or even be considered partners in the local political evolutionary process by Beijing. This is particularly evident when considering that among their members were those calling for the end of one-party rule in China and introduction of parliamentary democracy there – which is both unrealistic and antagonistic.
It has also been clear that the kind of electoral arrangements that Beijing would like to see here, as outlined last year by the National People’s Congress Standing committee, are not accepted by many people here as a suitable end-point for the political evolution envisaged under the Basic Law. This, at least, is the view of most of the pan-democrat voters, who have historically made up the largest voter block in the directly elected segment of every LegCo election. A key question here – and a main sticking point in the debate over whether to accept the political reform package – was whether the proposals were really the end of the road, perhaps with some fine tuning to be thrown in for good measure at later stages.
That was crucial. If there had been a promise of future substantive revisions, leading to an overhaul of the process of selecting the Chief Executive, it would have been much harder for the pan-democrats to champion rejecting the accept-it-now-let’s-improve-on-it-later arguments coming from the government and Beijing. As the situation stood under the new electoral proposals, there were still a majority of votes in the nominating committee who could be swayed by the Chinese government and big business. This would prevent a contender who is not blessed by both sectors from even being chosen as a last two or three runner, let alone being elected as Chief Executive.
The nominating committee for the Chief executive election under the vetoed proposals would have been a continuation of the existing flawed and unpopular system of choosing candidates. So surely, at some stage, this aspect should be changed to offer a model that is acceptable to the vast majority? There lies, at least, a possibility of agreement. But even that’s a long way from widely touted public nomination model and wouldn’t some movement to a middle ground be more sensible? So why was there not an offer of definite improvements to be made in the future? Why, if the establishment was so keen on getting the reform package passed, were they at a loss to offer more than generalizations such as, ‘all political processes evolve, so ours will too’?
For the government to have insisted on the proposals, there seems to have been miscalculations: a misreading of public sentiment; a good dose of stubbornness; and/or, perhaps, some parties engineering a designed-to-fail package.
The pan-democrat leaders were able to claim the LegCo political reform vote defeat as a (Pyrrhic) victory. However, their veteran, aging leaders are now left with the challenge of an upcoming district Council and LegCo election in the next couple of years, a battle which may have to be fought by younger blood. Will the ‘victors’ be obliged to stand aside, having failed to gain concessions from Beijing and the government of Hong Kong? And how much of a poisoned chalice, in terms of relations with the central government, will they be passing on?