Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong
If you have been reading this blog what you wouldn’t know is that on September 12th we had the long awaited Hong Kong Elections. The pro-democratic camp got over 60% of the votes, while 40% were shared between the pro-government (pro-beijing) and moderate candidates, 7% of those went to those who supported democratic reforms in China but as a slower pace than the PR candidates. Yet we ended up with 2 seats out of five in the Hong Kong Constituency which I belong, where we had nearly 70% of the votes. The democratic party lost two seats, making the DAB the biggest party in Legco. In fact in a city when 60% of voters put their ballot in to support universal suffrage by 2012 we ended up with 25 out of 60 seats in the legislature. We don’t have the majority. And even if the world press and that of Hong Kong is selling the results as a story about how the democratic camp in this city lost, and that this was a huge pro-beijing win. It’s not.
All this proves is the system we have right now, is flawed in a intense way and that is does not reflect the true feelings of the people of this city. Hong Kong people did speak, but the system failed us. I have been extremely quiet about this issue because simmering beneath my avoidance is a rage and dissappointment, not of the results, but the way the press, the public and even our legislators have managed to make this into a failure, or at least a lesson instead of using this result as proof that democratic elections are the only way for the people to have power over their own lives.
If we had a first past the post system of elections, if all the 60 seats were directly elected, Hong Kong people would have had the government we voted for, the democratic camp would have the majority. But because we don’t have such a system, because we have a proportional representative vote because we have the functional constituencies, we supposedly lost. Sure we did in the number of seats. But we lost because the system we have is against us, which is why we wanted it changed in the first place. Which is what the last year has been about.
The election did not prove that people in Hong Kong do not want a democracy, nor the majority of people support beijing, nor that we do not have a sophisticated enough electorate. What this election proved is the system we have is set up to keep power out of our own hands, rigged in a way that the majority of votes is not reflected in the results, and for us to lose. That is the very reason we wanted to promote change, that we believed Hong Kong deserved a fair elecctoral system to begin with.
We didn’t lose, I truly resent that. The results just showed we were right, and that because we were, it makes perfect sense that many who govern our city for the next four years should and would be dissapointing. The results is the very reason Hong Kong people need to stay committed. The number of seats we didn’t win is the very meaning behind what we are trying to achieve.
It’s what we don’t have that has made this situation. It’s what we want that will solve it.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
I am happy to report that I reported on something you might like to read, though it was not in Hong Kong papers.
It was exactly on this issue of flawed system. I did a piece that intersected wtih my Chinese foreign policy class, my journalism classes, and several interviews I did with voters.
It will be on my site when I return from the states mid-week.
go glutter.
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did beijing design the election system this way? i bet the mainland government knew this all along, to keep democracy down and themselves on top. bastards.
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