Hong
Kongers derail Beijing's election
plans By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - With less than two weeks to go
before this city's scheduled election of its third
post-handover chief executive, the people of Hong
Kong have seized control of the election campaign,
cutting the strings once held by puppet masters in
Beijing.
While the vast majority of Hong
Kong's 7.1 million people will have no vote in the
small-circle March 25 election, the collective
clamor of their voices has been heard and should
ultimately - much to the Chinese leadership's
dismay - determine the winner.
The biggest
losers can already be clearly identified in a
mud-slinging, scandal-ridden campaign that has
sullied the city's
reputation for fair play
and good governance and revealed Beijing as an
emperor with no clothes.
Once this
prolonged political farce comes to a merciful end
and a new chief executive is declared, Chinese
leaders will be obliged to pause and reflect on
their ham-fisted management of Hong Kong affairs
and their misunderstanding of the city's evolving
political culture.
Some important lessons
should have been learned-the first and foremost of
which is: Stop taking advice from Hong Kong's
billionaire tycoon class; they are just as far
removed from the political pulse of the city as
the Beijing bureaucrats who seem to take their
word as gospel.
If Chinese leaders had
stopped cozying up to the business elite and spent
more time listening to the voice of the people,
they would not be caught in this embarrassing
predicament. As it stands, the campaign of their
preferred choice to be Hong Kong's next leader,
former chief secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, is so
wracked by scandal as to render him all but
unelectable.
Yes, Tang has the backing of
big business and by far the largest number of
nominations (378) on the 1,200-member Election
Committee, but his approval rating among the Hong
Kong public dropped below 20% last month, just
above that of the pan-democratic candidate, Albert
Ho Chun-yan, who has no administrative experience,
no political backing among Hong Kong's movers and
shakers and zero support in Beijing.
If
Tang's popularity with tycoons and members of the
Election Committee were to translate into victory
on March 25, Hong Kong would face street protests
against what would be perceived as his
illegitimate election and a subsequent crisis of
governance.
Chinese leaders, no matter
their preference, simply cannot allow this to
happen, and so have signaled that Tang's chief
rival in the campaign, Leung Chung-ying - who,
like Tang, is a Beijing loyalist - is also
acceptable. But the lack of clarity has only
succeeded in splitting Hong Kong's
pro-establishment politicians into feuding Leung
and Tang camps and heightened the mudslinging and
political maneuvering in the run-up to the
election.
Hong Kong's lively media may
have hounded Tang into confessions of infidelity
in his marriage and over building an illegal,
2,400-square-foot underground palace beneath one
of his homes, but anti-Leung forces in the city's
Legislative Council (Legco) are also doing their
best to derail his candidacy. Leung was favored by
53.7% of the respondents in a University of Hong
Kong (HKU) opinion survey conducted in late
February, but his support has since dropped to
43.8%.
After the city's Information
Services Department issued a press release last
month suggesting that Leung was guilty of conflict
of interest while serving as a judge 10 years ago
in a design contest for the West Kowloon Cultural
District, a Legco investigative committee has
taken up the case and announced plans to summon
Leung to testify on March 20, five days before the
chief executive election.
While at this
time the evidence against Leung is both spotty and
dated, a grilling by a Legco investigative panel
will probably do nothing to enhance his popular
appeal just ahead of the election.
Recent
reports that Leung's campaign manager, Fanny Law
Fan Chiu-fun, dined with an alleged triad figure,
Kwok Wing-hung (aka "Shanghai Boy") also served to
undermine Leung's image for probity.
Meanwhile, a desperate Tang - badly
wounded but, with Beijing's continued if pained
blessing, still standing - has become increasingly
aggressive in his attacks on Leung, believing that
his only hope of overcoming dismal approval
ratings is to destroy the credibility of his
primary opponent. Although Leung has served as the
convenor of the Executive Council that advises the
chief executive, Tang has accused him of lacking
the necessary experience to lead Hong Kong and of
being "wolf-like" in his attacks on his opponents.
"It is unfortunate that Mr Leung is still
relishing in all this mudslinging," Tang declared
in a recent debate, referring to Leung's charge
that Tang had dodged responsibility and blamed
subordinates for his mistakes as a high-ranking
government official. "If this is the only way Mr.
Leung thinks he can win, this is sad. With all the
serious issues facing Hong Kong, citizens deserve
better than these negative attacks."
Stressing his own experience in government
as chief secretary, financial secretary and
secretary for commerce, Tang warned that a Leung
administration "is a risk Hong Kong cannot afford.
Hong Kong needs an experienced chief executive who
can deliver results".
Unfortunately for
Tang, however, despite his administrative
pedigree, he represents a much greater risk than
Leung, and Beijing's kingmakers must be ruing the
day they mistakenly placed their chips on his
candidacy. If this were truly a democratic
election for chief executive - as is tentatively
promised for 2017 - the disgraced Tang would have
been forced to withdraw from the race, his tail
between his legs, and retreat into early
retirement.
As it is, Tang has stayed on
to preserve the electoral farce that most Hong
Kong people have already identified and rejected
and that Chinese leaders would be smart to
re-evaluate. If Tang wins, those leaders will lose
all credibility with the person in the street and,
worse, Hong Kong's government will be viewed as
illegitimate by much of the rest of the world.
A mock chief executive election for the
general public, organized by HKU pollster Robert
Chung Ting-yiu and scheduled to take place two
days prior to the Election Committee vote, will
add to the pressure on committee members to select
the candidate who is the choice of the people, not
the tycoons-and, at this point, that appears to be
Leung.
Of course, it is possible that
neither Leung nor Tang will receive enough
Election Committee votes (601) to win, which would
trigger a re-vote in May and open the way for new
candidates to enter the contest. But such an
outcome would only further underscore Beijing's
ineptitude and thus be frowned upon by the central
government.
In the end, the election
fiasco should prompt Chinese leaders to face some
painful, sobering facts about Hong Kong. Despite
the leadership's best efforts to stage-manage this
campaign, the wheels have come off Beijing's plan
for orderly leadership succession in the city.
Chinese officials may have control of the
Election Committee that chooses Hong Kong's next
chief executive, but events have shown that it
cannot control public opinion and that the special
freedoms - of speech, press and assembly - that
were granted to the city prior to the 1997
handover from British to Chinese rule continue to
prevail.
On March 25, Hong Kong will
likely have a new chief executive. Soon
thereafter, Beijing needs a new game plan for Hong
Kong.
Kent Ewing is a Hong
Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached
at kewing56@gmail.com Follow him on Twitter:
@KentEwing1
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