Hong
Kong passes China's democracy test By Augustine Tan
HONG KONG - Beijing's
dry run for a popularly elected chief executive
for Hong Kong went well on Sunday when a
1,193-member committee picked favored son Leung
Chun-ying to be the city's next leader.
Interestingly, Leung's father as a
policeman used to guard the gate of the Governor's
House when Hong Kong was under British colonial
rule. His son will soon run that building (now
called Government House), and the entire
city-state when sworn in on July 1.
The
weeks of campaigning that led up to Sunday's
election saw as many scandals, demonstrations and
tears as a Western election. Though candidates
only needed to appeal to a tiny
election committee, all
the parades and posters of a normal democracy were
on display.
In the end, however, Beijing
needed to press a panic button to ensure
58-year-old Leung got in. This was a test of a
"fail-safe" system that Beijing will need for the
elections by universal suffrage it has promised by
2017, according to pro-democracy activist Wong
Wai-hung.
"Beijing has built this system
into the way Hong Kong is run," said Wong, a
founder of the anti-Beijing June 4 campaign. "This
system is made up of people who don't want to
think or get directly involved ... farmers,
factory workers and even business executives who
just sit back and await instructions. They provide
the fail-safe numbers.
"Even when
universal suffrage is introduced, there will be a
vetting committee. All future candidates will be
safe, from Beijing's point of view. This is the
way the communists work."
Still, Beijing
did not have it all easy this time around.
Infidelity and housing scandals that
embroiled former front-runner Henry Tang Ying-yen
forced politburo member Liu Yandong to canvass
support for Leung in neighboring Shenzhen.
President Hu Jintao and his presumptive heir Xi
Jinping had to hold closed-door sessions with the
likes of Li Ka-shing, the world's richest Chinese
and the driving force behind Tang's candidacy,
over the competition.
In January, Beijing
announced that both Leung and Tang were acceptable
as the next chief executive. Supported by Li and
almost all the other property tycoons in the city,
Tang surged ahead in gathering endorsements. He
had 379 endorsements from the 1,200-member
election committee while a candidate must secure
only 150 endorsements to enter the race.
There was widespread speculation that
Leung might not even get enough nominations to
enter the race and even no-hoper Albert Ho
Chun-yan of the Democratic Party was far ahead of
him in the support count.
With property
prices soaring and private apartments beyond the
reach of most in the middle-class as well as his
plebeian background, Leung became popular with the
general public. He was ahead of Tang in every
single public opinion poll, conducted by friends
and foes alike. Everybody seemed to be rooting for
him. Even little grannies shivering in doorways in
the coldest winter in 26 years were cheering him
on.
So popular was Leung that newspapers
generally known for their antipathy towards
suspected Communist Party cadres, as he likely was
for almost 30 years, broke ranks to concentrate
fire on Tang. All their focus was on the real and
alleged trysts of a man seen as born with a silver
spoon in his mouth.
The women were named.
Post-coital e-mails allegedly exchanged between
the parties were published. None of these,
however, fazed Beijing.
It was not until
the final week of campaigning that a very nasty
four-letter word laid Tang low, though he was who
was by now being openly branded a "stupid pig" by
the media and the man in the street.
During their last televised debate Leung
casually threw out the word "sofa". This was a
reference to the piece of furniture in Tang's
spacious head-of-civil-service bailiwick where
some of his marital activities were alleged to
have taken place.
Tang retaliated
instantly by claiming that way back in 2003, at
the height of massive protests against a proposed
public security law, Leung had suggested deploying
anti-riot police and the use of teargas. Leung had
also proposed punishing a commercial radio station
for its support of the demonstrations, Tang
claimed.
Both proposals were allegedly
made during an Executive Council (cabinet)
meeting. From British colonial days, the substance
of such discussions is treated as state secrets.
Beijing, obsessed with keeping a tight lid
on state secrets even at the best of times, was
appalled.
But Tang was still not done. He
insisted he had broken confidentiality because the
public had a right to know about such things. This
was precisely what the pro-democracy camp had been
yelling at Beijing all these many years. Tang, it
seemed, was looking to some of Beijing's enemies
for support.
For Tang's highly
professional handlers the man was simply out of
control.
All involved parties moved into
high gear. Pro-democracy parties condemned Beijing
for interfering in Hong Kong's internal politics
and reneging on the promise of "one country, two
systems". Beijing was also accused of projecting
its internal party power struggle onto Hong Kong,
thus ensuring that whatever faction won the
communist party would have a firm grip on the
city.
While various groups began to
organize mass protests on election day and after,
these had less to choosing the next chief
executive than with the Legislative Council
elections to be held on September 9. In this vote,
the current 60 seats will be increased by 10, five
of which will be returned by the district
councils.
The entire pro-democracy camp
was taking full advantage of the situation to try
out their campaign strategies. Mass demonstrations
are planned for coming months to exploit Beijing's
frantic involvement in the polls over the past
fortnight. That last-minute effort by Beijing
produced a huge win for Leung: 689 votes out of a
total of 1,132. In contrast Tang saw 84 supporters
defect to Leung.
A pro-democracy campaign
for blank votes to force a reset of the entire
election failed completely. That, in itself, would
have assured Beijing that the system it had
installed in Hong Kong before the 1997 handover is
working smoothly.
And no one will have
greater interest in seeing this system continue to
work than Leung, since he will probably become the
first chief executive to serve the full two
five-year terms that Beijing envisaged back in the
1980s.
Augustine Tan is a Hong
Kong-based journalist.
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