Ordinary Gweilo

It must be difficult trying to make the case for the government and the DAB in current circumstances, but there still seem to people willing to do it. Step forward Jasper Tsang and Priscilla Lau!

This is from the Hong Kong Standard:

Priscilla Lau Pui-king, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People’s Congress, questioned whether Hong Kong people were mature enough to elect the chief executive and legislative councillors by universal suffrage.

“The pro-democracy camp won many seats . . . simply because many voters disliked pro-government candidates, rather than supporting the democrats,” she said.

and from the South China Morning Post

Lau Pui-king also told the City Forum yesterday that it was too early for Hong Kong to move towards universal suffrage because local political parties were immature and did not truly represent all sections of the community. She also warned that should the government respond to calls for full democracy, it could scare away investors, professionals and the middle class.

Well, I think that at least one of her points is valid – Hong Kong political parties are a long way from being mature, but that’s a consequence of the political system more than anything else. If/when we have full democracy, the Democratic Party will have served its purpose and will either be transformed into something more relevant or disbanded. The DAB may still survive as the voice of the patriotic working classes.

I also agree that the Democrats and their allies got votes because people refused to vote DAB, but that happens all over the world. For example, in the UK in 1983 when Margaret Thatcher won a landslide victory, it was hard to find people who would admit voting for the Tories, and opinion pollsters had to change their methods to allow for the fact that people said they would vote Labour but actually voted Tory! Michael Foot was an ineffectual leader and the left-wing of the Labour Party were far too extreme for many natural Labour voters, so they turned to the Tories. The Labour Party eventually figured out that they had to change, and now natural Tory voters support Tony Blair!

As for voters being immature, I don’t think that’s a very wise thing to say, but there may be an element of truth in it, and again it is a consequence of the political system we have. Give people the power to choose the whole Legislative Council and the Chief Executive and you will force them to think harder about what they want.

The oddest thing she said was that full democracy could scare away investors, professionals and the middle class. The only thing that would scare people away would be if this is mis-handled, and the encouraging thing so far is that the march on 1 July was peaceful and the reaction to it has been generally level-headed and pragmatic.

Tsang Yok-sing is now saying that he is in favour of universal suffrage but that he thinks that there should be a nomination committee to approve the candidates for Chief Executive rather than a totally free vote. The Democrats are outraged at this suggestion, but it may be a reasonable compromise on a short-term basis, depending upon how the candidates are chosen. It’s a fact of life that Hong Kong is part of China and that the central government has the final say, so electing a CE who would be unacceptable to Beijing would create a big problem.