Hong Kong | Protesters delay referendum amid differences

Demonstrators stand on Sai Yeung Choi Street in the Mong Kok area

Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, who have blocked major thoroughfares, snarled traffic and disrupted businesses in the city for more than a month, have delayed a planned referendum because of differences in the movement on the issues to be voted on and method of polling.
Protest leaders were due to hold a referendum yesterday and today. The proposed motions were whether they should demand the government ask China to review its Aug. 31 decision to vet candidates for the chief executive elections, and whether they should call for an outside body to take charge of procedures for 2016 legislative elections and the chief 2017 executive poll.
The protests, entering their fifth week, were sparked by China’s decision to exercise control over nominating procedures for the city’s first leadership election in 2017. Tensions have risen in the city between demonstrators and those who opposed to the disruptions, who have obtained court orders to clear barricaded streets.
“You can disagree, but you cannot just sit in the middle of the road,” said Betty Yung, 65, a retired principal who spoke on stage at an anti-Occupy rally that sprang up on Saturday night in Tsim Tsa Tsui. “This is not the right way to do things. What if the ambulance that’s supposed to bring me to the hospital ends up being stuck in traffic because the roads are blocked by the students?”
The protesters announced plans for the referendum after talks with the government on Oct. 21 failed to resolve the impasse.
Hong Kong’s High Court extended until today interim injunctions banning pro-democracy protesters from defending their barricades, as police said events were turning chaotic.
High Court Judge Thomas Au ruled Friday to continue the injunctions over the weekend, until a hearing to revoke them resumes today. Although the police weren’t instructed by the court to remove barriers, the injunctions forbid protesters from intervening with their removal by third parties, raising the potential for renewed violence.
Two injunctions were filed on Oct. 20 by an association of taxi drivers and a minibus company at a protest site in Mong Kok, and a third by a property company controlled by Chinese state-backed Citic Ltd. at the main site in Admiralty.
As the injunction hearings are civil suits, plaintiffs have the right to take “lawful action” to remove the barricades, Hui said Friday.
Protest leaders and lawmaker James Tien have called for Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to step down, saying the people have lost trust in the government.
“I will not resign,” Leung said in comments broadcast on Cable TV Saturday. “We will need to go back to the existing legal framework to solve Hong Kong’s current issues. Anyone who has a different political view will have to go through the legal framework and not using illegal ways to express their views.”
Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive after the city reverted to Chinese rule, on Friday called on pro-democracy protesters to end their street occupations or risk damaging the city’s economy.
A plan to link trading between the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges has been delayed because of the protest in Hong Kong, Ming Pao reported yesterday, citing “authoritative” people in Beijing it didn’t identify.
Hong Kong stock exchange spokeswoman Lorraine Chan declined to comment on the report; spokesman Scott Sapp didn’t answer a phone call to his mobile phone. A call to the press office of the Shanghai Stock Exchange outside business hours went unanswered.
Occupy protest leaders are in talks with pro-democracy lawmakers on a plan for mass resignations to force a de facto referendum on political reform, Alex Chow, secretary general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, said Saturday, according to the South China Morning Post.
If lawmakers from each of the city’s five geographical constituencies resign, the government would have to hold by-elections that would serve as such a referendum, the report cited Chow as saying. Lulu Chen, Bloomberg