Kapok | Frustrating exhilaration

Eric Sautedé

Against all odds, the democratic fervour that has engulfed Hong Kong in the past two years appears far from being abated—quite the contrary.

The clear cut victory of the pro-democracy camp in the geographic constituencies in September and the advent of a young boisterous generation of self-determination-leaning legislators served as a proof that the spirit of the 2014 Occupy Central with Love and Peace and the subsequent Umbrella Movement had not waned but instead transformed into a fiery force able to rock the boat of institutional politics from within.

Then came the so-called “oath-taking controversy” triggered by legislators-elect Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching, that ultimately led to them being unseated by Hong Kong’s High Court on November 15. In the meantime, the pro-establishment camp had ridiculed itself by engaging in self-depreciating bickering and absenteeism and the central authorities had been somehow convinced that a heavy-handed intervention in the form of a secretly sought interpretation of the Basic Law would “scare the chickens by killing the monkeys”.

Up to 15 legislators could fall victim of the ruling, if Wang Zhenmin, the legal advisor of the Hong Kong Liaison Office, was to be trusted. Ultimately, “only” four others are being submitted to a new judicial review instigated by CY Leung and his Secretary for Justice on December 2, including veteran activist “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung and Edward Yiu Chung-yim, the newly elected assistant professor representing the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape (ASPL) functional constituency.

Yet the whole process had but two consequences: on the one hand, the pro-democracy camp has regrouped and is now displaying a resolute unity in denouncing the illegitimacy of Beijing’s ruling: by equating the provocative independence drive of a few with the self-determination-leaning stance of the many, what was originally a discordant aggregate had been turned into a united bloc; on the other hand, the public is becoming ever more wary of the situation, and the public sentiment index released by Hong Kong University on December 15 indicates a plunge of 7.1 points compared to November—Government Appraisal faring the worst—with a level that is becoming dangerously close to the low tide of January 2016 when the disappearance of the Causeway Bay booksellers started to unravel.

No doubt that the announcement, on December 9, by CY Leung himself that he would not run—allegedly for “family reasons”—for a second term in the coming March Chief Executive election was intended as a gesture of conciliation or even a disguised admission of failure: the long-term dislike of and distrust in “689” (the number of votes he received in 2012) aka “the wolf” was yet again underscored on December 13, when another HKU survey revealed that Leung is now the least appreciated Chief Executive since the handover, at only 35 points, beating even the dwindling approval rate of Tung Chee-hwa at the time of the combined SARS and Article 23 crisis!

But if there is one thing that the Hong Kong electorate has learnt from these troubling times it is that their voice will only be faithfully defended by a handful few, whatever the context and the venue, and even though these few cannot be the majority by institutional design they have to become more numerous: on December 11, the pro-democracy camp thus won more than a quarter of the seats on the Election Committee that will designate the next Chief Executive in March 2017. 325 seats out of 1,200! In the election committee subsectors of Social Welfare, Information Technology, Health Services, Legal, Education and Higher Education, the pro-democrats won all the seats and they won a majority in accountancy, ASPL, medical and engineering—all of these knowledge-based!

Out of curiosity I checked if this could ever happened in Macao—thus allowing some form of competition—but unfortunately, even in the more spirited social or education sectors, pro-establishment figures rule and command the votes, including present-day Secretaries and soon-to-be recipients of the Golden and Silver Lotus(es). In Macao, nothing short of universal suffrage can change the system.