| |
ANALYSIS
HK leader loses the mandate
of heaven
By Wong Kwok Wah
HONG KONG - With the benefit of hindsight, Tung
Chee-hwa, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (SAR) of China, should now realize
that he should have pushed back the national-security
legislating exercise to 2005. This measure would have
saved him from the state of disgrace in which he now
finds himself.
Public acknowledgment of
defeat
Late on Sunday, Tung, after an emergency
meeting with his cabinet, decided to shelve the pending
resumption of second and third reading of the
national-security bill, which was due this Wednesday.
Tung made no bones of his backing down being a result of
withdrawal of support by the Liberal Party (LP), a
business-led component of his ruling coalition.
James Tien, the LP chairman, had announced his
resignation from the Tung cabinet at 10pm on Sunday, one
hour before the critical meeting, as a result of Tung's
earlier refusal to halt the controversial legislating
exercise.
Tien stole almost all the limelight
during the political roller-coaster over the weekend.
Returning to Hong Kong on Friday evening after flying to
Beijing, he relayed a message alleged to be from China's
central government that Beijing had dictated no
timetable on Hong Kong's legislating exercise. Tien and
his party therefore called on the Hong Kong
administration to defer the resumption of second reading
to the end of this year.
The next day, Tien
appeared to hold back after flanking Tung, who announced
that the legislating exercise would go ahead as
scheduled, though some concessions would be made as a
reply to the vociferous public uproar. At that juncture,
Tien stated unequivocally that he would abide with the
cabinet decision, although his party would continue
gauging public views.
Then came his Sunday
resignation, which in effect killed any hope Tung had of
pushing the bill through, as LP and Democratic deputies
together command a simple majority in the legislature.
The defeat for Tung was more significant than
not being able to enact a bill. There were precedents in
which the administration had been defeated in
legislature votes in the six years of Tung's SAR reign
after the former British colony was handed back to
China. The significance of this occasion was that Tung
seemed to have his connections to Beijing out of order.
The first sign of the times came on July 1, when
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made his point in front of TV
cameras that his earlier appeal to Hong Kong to
"understand, trust and unite" was more for Tung's
administration than anyone else. It was the first time a
top Chinese official openly suggested that there was
room for Tung's regime to improve.
Wen left the
SAR at noon, obviously to avoid any embarrassment that
might be caused by the scheduled mass rally in that
afternoon. But part of Wen's entourage stayed behind to
watch, denoting the premier's concern. The rally saw a
turnout of more than half a million, which meant that
roughly one out of every 10 Hong Kong residents took to
the street. (The police announced their tally of 350,000
people but admitted it was only the figure of those
still in procession at 6pm and did not include those who
had dropped out after having arrived at the march
destination earlier, nor those unable to make it because
of too many people.)
The news of the mass rally
was completely blacked out in mainland China. The
Guangdong cable TV station was so well prepared that it
replaced the news with circus show footage when relaying
Hong Kong terrestrial TV signals.
Things took a
sharp turn overnight. From July 2 onward, the Guangdong
blackout on the Hong Kong rally was lifted. Flashbacks
of the marches together with comments not friendly to
Tung were no longer censored. For the first time, people
in Guangdong could witness with their own eyes how
unpopular the Beijing-cherished Tung was in Hong Kong.
If this bizarre scenario was not reported to Tung by
Hong Kong's representative office at Guangzhou, then it
was a major bureaucratic failure.
Major
developments go unnoticed
On Thursday, July 3,
Tien flew to Beijing. Although he said the visit was at
his initiation, it was generally accepted that Beijing
would not entertain gatecrashers. Those who spared a
time slot for Tien included no less than Liu Yandong,
the head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) united
front work department, as well as a known protege of
President Hu Jintao, the CCP general secretary. There
was no question CCP central found it necessary to open
an alternative dialogue channel in Hong Kong, instead of
relying solely on Tung.
Two more prominent
legislators subsequently got the same Beijing ticket.
Both accountant Li Ka-cheung and banker David Li,
themselves not Democrats, were known to be against
rushing through the national-security bill after being
impressed by the mass rally.
Unfortunately for
Tung, he did not sense the ominous message behind the
three legislators gaining special access to Beijing.
Under the influence of local pro-Beijing forces and the
Central Government Liaison Office at Hong Kong (CGLOHK),
he believed that by sticking to the pre-rally time
schedule, he would impress on all non-Democrats to rally
behind him and all discontent would die down "after the
duckling is cooked".
Possibly Tung was not the
only person to find trouble in his line to Beijing. As
Beijing's official and only representative, CGLOHK, did
not fare any better. Its director, Gao Jiren, sought to
meet Tien after the latter revealed his message from
Beijing. It was said Gao tried to convince Tien in the
private meeting that Beijing indeed had a timetable.
Tien was not impressed, believing with good reason that
his information was newer and more reliable.
Under the coordination of CGLOHK, traditional
pro-Beijing elements lost no time in holding forums,
placing newspaper advertisements and writing letters to
editors, in an attempt to create an atmosphere to
counter the July 1 mass rally as well as to solidify
Tung's resolve not to back down.
The influence
of CGLOHK obviously went as far as to affect reports on
Hong Kong by state-level media such as Xinhua News
Agency, People's Daily and China Central Television. All
these outlets biased their reports toward Tung's hard
line, which in turn reinforced Tung's belief that he was
closer to the heart of Beijing than Tien was.
If
not for the spectacular turnout on July 1, Beijing might
not have had second thoughts over the appraisal of Tung.
The size of the rally served to tell that past ridicule
of Tung by Democrats in Hong Kong were not only
politically motivated, but also with good grounds.
Grievances reach critical mass
While
it is not unfair to say that the mass turnout was a
result of grievances accumulated over the past six years
- negative assets, unemployment, the outbreak of severe
acute respiratory syndrome, the dishonesty of Financial
Secretary Antony Leung and the irritating manners of
Security Chief Regina Ip, among others, the spark was
the government's adamancy to push a controversial piece
of legislation with eyebrow-raising haste.
According to documents provided by the Hong Kong
government's Department of Justice, it requires at least
16 months to draft major legislation. The drafting alone
is only one component of the whole legislating
procedure. Yet this government announced last September
its intention to enact the law and dictated that it
would complete the entire process in nine months.
While Beijing has always held a view favoring
rapid implementation of a security law for Hong Kong, it
has never uttered a word of urgency throughout the five
years of Tung's first term. It is widely accepted in
Hong Kong that the July deadline was in order to finish
the exercise well ahead of oncoming elections - district
polls will take place this November and the ballots for
the legislature by the end of next year. Local
pro-Beijing forces believe that any political debate
arising from a pending national security bill would be
disadvantageous to their electioneering.
Because
of the tight schedule, the government did not allow
ample time for public consultation. The drafting quality
itself was laughable. To make things worse, an outbreak
of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the
interim took away another three months of people's
concentration, making the legislating process appear
even more rushed.
Beijing was absolutely right
to create alternative dialogue channels with Hong Kong
at the eleventh hour. Instead of issuing a forthright
instruction for Tung and his administration to do or not
do anything, CCP invited Tung's usual sympathizers to
decide upon their conscience. The result was the
avoidance of a mass showdown - and the Hang Seng Index
surged. Hong Kong's internal peace has now been attained
at the price of Tung's disgrace. Tung should lose his
naivete now and figure out a way to bow out with face,
if he has any left.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
