MCLC: enviable openness in HK elections

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: enviable openness in HK elections
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (3/16/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/world/asia/in-hong-kong-vote-some-chinese
-see-enviable-openness.html

In Hong Kong Elections, Some Chinese See Enviable Openness
By KEITH BRADSHER 

HONG KONG ‹ The three candidates to become the next chief executive of
Hong Kong engaged in a vituperative, televised debate on Friday evening in
an election campaign that is being closely followed in mainland China.

The openness with which allegations of corruption, consorting with
gangsters and other improprieties are being discussed in Hong Kong this
week is being compared on the mainland to the secrecy with which Bo Xilai
was dismissed on Thursday as the Communist Party secretary of one of
China¹s largest cities, Chongqing.

Taiwan¹s presidential elections in January drew broad attention on
microblogging sites in mainland China for the openness with which citizens
were able to discuss the pros and cons of their possible leaders. The Hong
Kong elections appear to be drawing even more attention, with unfavorable
comparisons to how the mainland still operates, including severe
restrictions on who can participate.

A microblogger complained on Friday evening that the local television
station in Zhuhai, a mainland city across the Pearl River from Hong Kong,
had broadcast the debate but suppressed comments by Albert Ho, the
chairman of the Democratic Party here. ³What are you afraid that we would
hear?² wrote the Internet user, who derided the relative lack of freedom
on the mainland. ³The so-called freedom of speech, freedom of the press ‹
it is a joke.²

Henry Tang, the former second-ranking official in Hong Kong who has close
ties to Beijing and is the favorite of most of the city¹s tycoons, traded
accusations on Friday evening with Leung Chun-ying, a populist with
similarly close ties to Beijing, and Mr. Ho.

Only 1,193 people are allowed to vote in the elections on March 25. It is
an elite group in which tycoons are heavily represented but that also
includes members of the Legislature and of the National People¹s Congress
in Beijing. There are even 30 practitioners of traditional Chinese
medicine, an obscure category included because they tend to follow
Beijing¹s instructions unquestioningly.

But even during Prime Minister Wen Jiabao¹s annual press conference on
Wednesday, there were few hints of whether Mr. Tang or Mr. Leung was more
in favor in Beijing. Mr. Tang, the son of wealthy industrialists who
immigrated from Shanghai after the Communists took power on the mainland
in 1949, was widely viewed here as a favorite of the influential Shanghai
faction in Beijing. Yet he has not won any public endorsement from Beijing
as he has acknowledged scandals involving marital infidelity and the
construction of a capacious basement under his wife¹s villa without
planning permission or the payment of real estate taxes.

One of the most striking features of the election campaign here, and the
development that may cause the greatest discomfiture in Beijing, is that
all three candidates are vying to outdo each other in allowing greater
democracy in Hong Kong, as a way to increase their standings in polls of
the general public.

The Beijing authorities have said that they ³may² allow universal suffrage
‹ one person, one vote ‹ in the 2017 chief executive election. But all
three candidates in the race here strongly endorsed on Friday evening
letting everyone vote in the 2017 election.

Mr. Tang went further in the debate, also suggesting the abolition of
so-called functional constituencies, representing sectors of the economy
like banking and commerce, in the 2020 legislative elections. Half the
seats in the Legislature are occupied by representatives of functional
constituencies now ‹ Mr. Tang used to be one of them ‹ and they have been
the bedrock of pro-Beijing votes on legislation even as the general
population has tended to elect democracy advocates to the other half of
the Legislature.

Mr. Leung helped Beijing draft Hong Kong¹s Basic Law, which has been the
territory¹s miniconstitution ever since the British returned it to Hong
Kong in 1997, and which is widely seen here as being close to the Chinese
Communist Party. But he also endorsed universal suffrage during the
debate, saying that ³Hong Kong does not belong to a small circle; it
belongs to everyone.²