Supporters of greater independence for Hong Kong gain
a foothold in the city’s legislature
ELECTIONS held on September 4th for Hong
Kong’s legislature must have shocked the leadership in Beijing. In their
highest turnout for any such poll in the territory’s history (58%), voters sent
a clear signal of discontent with China’s attempts to stifle democracy. Even
more worryingly for Chinese officials, some of them supported radicals who
believe Hong Kong should decide its own future regardless of China’s wishes. Several such “localists” gained seats for the first time.
The results confirm that separatism has
emerged as a powerful new force in Hong Kong. It has grown out of a failed
campaign in 2014 to press the Chinese government to allow the territory’s
leader to be directly elected by voters, with no attempt to filter out
candidates deemed unacceptable to China’s ruling Communist Party.
Leaders of
that “Umbrella” movement are among six localists who were elected to the
70-member Legislative Council, known as Legco. Hong Kong’s government had tried
to prevent this by requiring candidates to declare their support for Hong
Kong’s status as part of China; several localists failed the test. That many
have now gained seats will be viewed in Beijing as a big political
challenge—the opening of a new front, as the party would see it, in a battle
against separatism that already confounds it in Xinjiang, Tibet and
independently governed Taiwan.
Voting arrangements for Legco ensured
that pro-democracy politicians, including localists, had very little chance of
taking a majority of the seats. Only 40 of them are elected through universal
suffrage. The rest are chosen by members of “functional constituencies”
representing various professions, businesses and social groups.
These tend to be pro-establishment. But pro-government
candidates did not do as well as they did in the previous elections for Legco
in 2012. They kept their majority, but took only 40 seats, three fewer than
last time. Of the 35 “geographical constituency” seats chosen by popular vote,
16 went to establishment candidates and 19 to a mixture of moderate democrats,
localists, radicals of other stripes and independent candidates with
pro-democracy leanings. With three other seats gained by universal suffrage,
and eight in functional constituences, pro-democracy politicians retain their
power to block some bills in Legco.
Hong Kong’s politicians had long been
divided into two camps. One was usually described as “pro-government” or
“pro-Beijing”. The other was called the “pan-democrats”, who wanted full
democracy for Hong Kong but did not challenge China’s right to rule it. The
elections have revealed a split in the pro-democracy camp between moderates
prepared to work within the current system, and young, often highly educated,
radicals.
Some of the localists gained their seats
at the expense of veteran democrats. Days before the polls, however, five
pro-democracy candidates withdrew in an effort to ensure victory for
like-minded rivals, even radical ones. This may have helped Nathan Law of a
party called Demosisto, who was a student leader during the Umbrella movement,
become the youngest ever person to win a Legco seat. He describes himself as a
“23-year-old kid”. Another localist, Eddie Chu Hoi-dick (pictured, with his
hands in the air), picked up some 84,000 votes, the most cast for any candidate
in a geographic constituency. Among veteran democrats who lost their seats were
Frederick Fung, Cyd Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan.
Many in Hong Kong, however, still prefer
candidates who do not challenge the status quo. Regina Ip won a seat in the
constituency of Hong Kong Island, despite having served as the government’s
security chief during its aborted attempt in 2003 to introduce a much-hated law
against sedition. Among pro-establishment candidates fighting in geographic
constituencies, Ms Ip gained the largest number of votes: around 60,000.
The high turnout, by Hong Kong’s
standards, was probably helped by a growing political awareness among people in
their late teens and early 20s, the generation that led the Umbrella protests.
Many young people feel less bound by the political conventions of Hong’s
transition to Chinese rule in 1997, when even firebrand democrats described
themselves as Chinese patriots. They believe China’s refusal to fulfil its
promise to give the territory more democracy has left them little choice but to
challenge China’s right to rule. Leaders
in Beijing will fight them tooth and nail.
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