… or at least that’s how the Beijing government would prefer it to be, if only they got their way in Hong Kong. But that’s not a joke either: at the current rate of constitutional development, Beijing may well achieve just that!
For those who don’t know, the HK government have released their proposals for constitutional reform of the 2007-2008 Chief Executive & Legislative Council elections some two weeks ago. These proposals, briefly, will double the election committee for the chief executive (from 800 to 1600) and will add 10 legislative seats: 5 to be directly elected, and the other 5 chosen by district councillors (who are elected by the people). Although this is undoubtedly an improvement over previous years, the actual difference this makes to the public is minor: we will still have virtually no say in the running of government. The changes to legco will still result in a 50/50 split of directly elected vs. less-than-directly elected councillors, and the doubling of election committee numbers to 1600 still amounts to some 0.023% of the population only. That’s the number of people who get to pick the chief executive!
A recent article in the SCMP (actually 9th November – not that recent, but i’ve been busy!) cites Central Policy Unit head Lau Siu-kai as saying that “if such major reform could not get through, his [Donald Tsang's] authority, political reputation, and even governance would be called into question” . Lau has hopes that the proposals would pass in legco, to risk further jeopardisation of the ‘reform’ process. I would say that for starters, the current government proposals are far from ‘major reforms’. Secondly, in the fight for any cause, one cannot just accept any olive branch handed to them to avoid risk of jeopardising the wider cause – doing so would give one party the upper hand always and reduce any motivation for reaching a proper compromise.
I accept that universal sufferage is for sure ruled out of the 2007/8 elections, and even believe that the pro-democracy parties are somewhat stubborn in their continual pursuit of this (though they have mellowed down somewhat recently) when they can be more productive concentrating on the next opportunity after – but it shocks me to see that an increasing fragment of Hong Kong society fail to see the importance of having open and accountable government.
Nearly everyone wants to see success from the ‘one country, two systems’ policy – many it seems, by turning this gradually into ‘one country, one system’. The irony is that this would only show the opposite. I believe that ‘economic prosperity’ can be achieved alongside political reforms – many others, it would appear, see the latter as hindering the former. If anything, transparency and representative government help ensure economic stability – providing the population are mature enough for that of course… and I like to believe in Hong Kong that we are.
