If 220,307 registered voters out of a population of 7 million to vote for an election committee of 800 out of 1,101 candidates (of which 237 will be returned uncontested) – who will then be responsible for ‘electing’ the next chief executive of Hong Kong can be hailed as a triumph for democracy, then I would really like to see Beijing’s reaction to the eventually-promised universal sufferage.
No doubt a simple system of direct election of the chief executive would be a massive defeat in democratic values if it returns the candidate whom the government dislikes the most. It would be a failure of public manipulation and propaganda if the incumbent government were to fail to get re-elected.
The current electoral system is a complete joke – and to praise it as “embodiments of democracy since both are contested elections” is just testament to the ignorance of the central government towards a democratic society.
Sure there are failures of most democratic systems, and each governing entity must draw up a system that best suits its subjects based on economical and cultural differences – but an election by 0.03% of the populace does not a democracy make, by any stretch of the english language.
The government is just buying time : when the chief executive and legislative are eventually fully elected Beijing would ensure that the pulleys are in place to do whatever they want anyway. By that point, it won’t even matter anymore. And that’s what concerns me the most: it’s not whether or not we get to elect our representatives now, it’s whether or not we can continue to pride ourselves in being a fair, relatively liberal, and open society that we have always been. When direct elections DO come I hope that the populace can be sensible enough to vote for who they really believe in, not who they are told to believe in.