Hong Kong party vows to fight for full democracy
15 April 2004
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s biggest democracy party vowed yesterday to carry on its fight for full direct elections even though China’s messengers have made it clear that Beijing will not allow this.
China’s parliament last week revised electoral laws in Hong Kong’s constitution, giving itself full control over how and when the territory’s leaders and lawmakers are chosen.
“We still want to fight for universal suffrage in 2007 because the central government has not openly ruled it out,” Democratic Party chairman Yeung Sum said.
Although Beijing said electoral changes may be made in time to select the city’s leader in 2007, it imposed a new barrier by requiring Hong Kong to seek Beijing’s approval before it can even begin legal proceedings to make such alterations.
That means Beijing can put off electoral change in the former British colony for as long as it likes.
Yeung said his party was not deterred.
“Beijing says changes can be made in 2007 and since it hasn’t ruled out universal suffrage, the door is still open,” said Yeung, who took over the party chairmanship from Hong Kong’s foremost democracy champion, Martin Lee, in 2002.
Beijing’s interpretation of Hong Kong’s constitution, while legal, has set off howls of protest from lawyers and democracy advocates who see it as breaking a promise of a high degree of autonomy that China gave when it took Hong Kong back from Britain in 1997.
Chinese legal experts and officials have reiterated in recent months that 2007 would be far too soon for universal suffrage and that it may only be implemented 30 years from now.
Beijing is eager not to dilute its central control and is willing to thwart, or at least delay, full democracy in Hong Kong amid worries that a leader could be elected who would challenge its authority.
Beijing may be able to hold off that possibility for a while, but voter frustration with the local China-backed government may well hand a decisive victory to pro-democracy forces in key legislative elections in September.
Such an outcome would be a nightmare for Beijing because the pan-democracy camp would be in a position to veto government policies and hamstring what is already a weak administration.
Yeung is quietly confident that the democracy camp will fare well. The camp currently commands 22 of the 60 legislative seats.
“We hope to get at least half of the seats. Our bargaining power would be greatly increased,” Yeung said.
Unlike Lee, who remains Hong Kong’s best-known democracy advocate and who angered Beijing recently by going to Washington to speak on the city’s fight for democracy, Yeung is more of the quiet party man.
He rarely makes appearances on radio or television and divides his time between party politics and lecturing in social work at the University of Hong Kong.
He is no less of a thorn in the side of Beijing, which has banned him from stepping into mainland China since 1989, when he and other Hong Kong activists helped those fleeing Beijing’s bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement centred in Tiananmen Square.
Yeung welcomed a recent official meeting between Chinese officials and a few democrat lawmakers, the first since 1989.
“We have differing views with Beijing on democracy, the Tiananmen crackdown, but we are always willing to talk,” he said.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 