Tung Chee Wah Resigns. My Apathy Expands as I am Less than a Person.

AWAITING A DEMOCRATIC HONG KONG

Tung Chee Wah finally officially resigned. I have continued to be uninterested in these events although I try to force myself. I cursory glance at the front page of the newspaper willing myself to buy it. Occasionally, I do but generally I don’t. A pile of unread papers sits under my feet as I type. I try to make myself watch the news, but I rather continue with my work and sorting out my photos. To be honest, I am so disinterested; I have not even bothered to read through the whole article I am posting below.

I know why though. Because it absolutely has nothing to do with me. The outcome might, but the process is shut off, cut off, shunted out of my hands. I wait like the rest of the seven million people to be presented with the results. It’s slightly like waiting for a king to be born, although only 29 countries in the world still have a monarchy and most of them are symbolic. Outside of gossip fodder and cutting ribbons most princes and princesses, and Kings or Queens own about as much power as an average citizen in their countries because they all have the vote. I of course don’t.

So far I had one conversation about it. It went something like,

“You think Tung is resigning because Chinese Communist party told him to?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he properly resigned.”

“Well, why now. He must have pissed someone off.”

“Maybe he didn’t. I think he’s wanted to quit for a while but other pressures are there, like CCP won’t let him go or they haven’t “found,” the right person. Maybe they like Donald Tsang, and are willing to put him up.”

“The man told us to have three kids. So ridiculous.”

“Yeah. I went to women’s conference and one of the questions that was asked, “My government tells me to have three babies, I don’t know how I can do this. I have to work. I have to look a certain way. I have to look after my parents. Society tells me I have to do all these things and now they tell me to have three babies. Dr. Griselda Pollock can you give me some advice on how I can achieve these things?”"

"She asked a feminist art historian to how to live her life??”

"Uhuh."

“What did the speaker say?”

“That you should question why and how the government should have the right to reduce your personage into its reproductive function and have a say over your personal decisions. How either way, if its China who wants you to have one child, or HK it’s three. Where does the power come from and why should you listen?”

“No shit.”

“I know. So here we are in a city where the heads of governments think it’s appropriate to decree how many kids women have, and women who actually listen. I am so embarrassed.”

“Then again you are in a city where power has always been top down.”

“Yup. Ridiculous. Gandhi died, 40? 50? Years ago?”

“So why do you think he resigned right now?”

“Who knows? Not like they will tell us.”

“Yeah, and then you have Taiwan who says they have located the people who shot Chen Shui Been, but oh they happen to be dead!”

“So convenient.”

“Do you think they killed them or do you think they just decided to set it up and framed those guys, since they can’t defend themselves as they are dead!”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.”

So mainly everything that has happened in the last two weeks can be described as:

“We the people who live in China know nothing about our government and why they make the decisions they do.”

So why should I care what is going on right now in any of those three places? It has been said that only when people view they have some sort of power, they will feel the need to participate. If they do not, it is where apathy grows.

It has also been said that transparency of government agencies are very important to allow the citizens to understand what is going on, so that they can participate, and prevent corruption and other unbecoming aspects of governments and the people who run it.

We have neither. Why should I care? Even if I do care. What can I do? There are not candidates I can back. No party that I can support, and the one that I do, has absolutely no chance of ever getting into power as they aren’t even allowed to go into China proper, and that so far they have had ONE meeting with Communist officials in eight years since Hong Kong has been handed over.

I don’t know what we were thinking when people asked Tung Chee Wah to Resign.

It was from a place of anger by the way the city has been run. How they dealt with crisis, such as SARS and how rude the government can be of the people. Aka. Regina Ip. But did anyone think ahead of what happens when Tung finally resigns? Did we remember that we did not have a single bit of power over the choice of the person who will take over?

Like, "hello," everyone from July 1st 2003. What was the outcome we wanted as we marched down Hennessey road asking the man to resign? We didn’t back it up with, “Martin Lee for Chief Executive.” “Szeto Wah into power.” We as a people did not have a candidate that was our own. We don’t because we never ever had a candidate of our own. And we damn well won’t be having one for a long time.

2007? Forget it. 2012. I don’t think so either. I think when we asked him to resign, we had group amnesia and forgot that no one is going to ask us who comes next. And now we got what we want. It means about as much as not getting what we wanted because either way: someone else gets to pick our leaders.

Having sentiments is one thing. Having a plan is another. And we do not have a plan because for so long, we never had to plan our own political assent. We simply did not realize the responsibility and planning that goes into self-determination, and our government wasn’t going to help us along or remind us either.

Somewhere along the line we missed a step. We equated losing Tung Chee Wah with Democracy. We were arguing against a man and not the system. Tung was not a dictator. Tung was a puppet. What we really need is to end one party rule. That slogan needs to have been shouted above all else and infused into our brains as to not lose focus, but we did. We didn’t fully accept the truth, which was nobody cares about our opinions and that’s the only salient fact in this episode.

I know. I need to want universal suffrage and put it into as many people as we can’s mind to support us. I know I can’t give up hope because that’s admitting defeat. But instead of giving up I feel apathetic. The most lauded of reaction and emotions those who don’t want to give up power aim for. It’s a great game plan. Don’t give people anything, and maybe they get bored, they give up, they forget, they lose hope.

I don’t know if I have lost hope, but I feel powerless. I AM powerless: less than the personage that I deserve.

I think about this a lot. How the women movement started because women felt they should have equal power. That they should have the vote. Equality through the last century has always been about suffrage. Whether it’s women or black people of the colonized. The fight has always been the vote.

Why?

Because without the vote, one is not a full person. We do not have an equal status under the law.

So by default, right now it’s not because I am a woman, not because I am black, not because I am a colonized person by the European powers nor under a dictator. I am simply unequal by the fact I am Chinese and I have remained in my homeland instead of living elsewhere in the Diaspora, elsewhere in democratic countries. Because I am from Hong Kong, and remain in Hong Kong. Thus I remain under an appointed official from a totalitarian regime.

Whereby I am less than a person than those in the Politburo. I am less than a person than the people who are given the right to choose the legislators in the functional constituency. I am just less than a person in the way a democratic country would count me as a person, as an adult.

There is a gap between who I feel I am, and who I really am. For in my mind, I am a full person with rights and ideas. Flesh and blood. Thoughts and Actions. The reality is that I am not fully those things as my government continues to deny me my right to equality against those who they deem more suitable.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights reads:

The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights establishes an international minimum standard of conduct for all States parties to it, ensuring the rights of self-determination; legal redress; equality; life; liberty; freedom of movement; fair, public, and speedy trial of criminal charges; privacy; freedom of expression, thought, conscience, and religion; peaceful assembly; freedom of association (including trade union rights and political parties); family; and participation in public affairs; but forbidding torture; "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"; slavery; arbitrary arrest; double jeopardy; and imprisonment for debt.

Ironically, Britain ratified this treaty in 1976 when they still ruled Hong Kong, and China ratified this in 2001. I know it can be argued that the UN is a paper government, but both those countries continue to participate in order to gain certain respectability and benefits of being part of an international community in this globalize world.

Yet Britain ruled us for another 21 years. The CCP continues to deny seven million people here of their rights to be persons. 1 billion across the borders. And those in Macau and Taiwan as well. Mainly every single Chinese person who live in “China.” No matter how you want to define the country.  We are not “people,” in the way “People” is defined by the country itself under the UN Charter.

But the UN like myself are powerless to enforce such treaties and those within China cannot even bring this topic up without fear of prosecution.

So I don’t support my government. So I believe in international law. So in my stance, what can I do?

Nothing.

With the recent events. I heard it loud and clear. I guess that’s why I want the vote. So I don’t have to know this dreadful feeling of being nothing, unheard, disrespected, not thought about, unanswered to. A disjunct between being of a full person in reality and not being considered one politically.

What can I do?

Someone tell me/us/them.

That’s the kind of advice we need. How to put a democratic government in place against all odds, not how we can achieve and maintain what the government have decreed us to be.

_____

Hong Kong leader resigns, ending eight troubled years
Posted 02:25am (Mla time) Mar 11, 2005
By Mark McCord, Stephanie Wong
Agence France-Presse
HONG KONG–Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa resigned Thursday, citing health reasons for cutting short an eight-year tenure plagued by economic recession, policy blunders, and unease over China’s interference.
Tung, hand-picked by Beijing to head the southern Chinese territory after its return to Chinese control in 1997, said failing health and stress had forced him to step down with more than two years left of his term in office.
"It is time to resign," an ashen-faced Tung told a press conference. "I think that is the responsible thing to do."
Tung said he had tendered his resignation to Chinese government officials on Thursday afternoon.
The 67-year-old former shipping magnate denied he had been fired by a Chinese leadership widely believed to have lost faith in his ability to govern, stressing repeatedly that he was stepping down for health reasons.
"Time creeps up. I’m almost 68 … it’s time to quit," Tung said.
"The work of chief executive is very busy
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and covers a wide spectrum of things. I understand [from doctors] that if I didn’t stop working as I had … it would have affected my efficiency and my decision-making," he said.
The announcement ends more than a week of frenzied speculation sparked by reports Tung would be handed a vice-chairmanship of China’s leading political advisory body, a post usually reserved for retiring officials.
During that time neither he nor government officials would comment on reports he had resigned, prompting fears China was stage-managing the affair in contravention of Hong Kong’s much-vaunted autonomy.
Tung said that by law his deputy, chief secretary Donald Tsang, would serve as his replacement but he could not confirm whether Tsang would serve the remaining two years of his term or the full five-year term of a chief executive.
This would be made clear once it was known whether Beijing had accepted his resignation, Tung said, a process he said he hoped would take "days rather than weeks."
"By the time the central government makes a decision on my resignation I think it will be in a position to make an announcement," he said.
Analysts warn that China’s hopes for a smooth leadership succession could spark a constitutional crisis.
Beijing is believed to be reluctant to allow Tsang, a Catholic and a former loyalist of the British colonial government, to serve a full term without trying him out for a shorter period first.
However the territory’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, says that a chief executive must stand for five years, posing the possibility of a politically risky reinterpretation of the law or, more damaging still, an amendment.
Tsang, 61, would not be drawn on the speculation saying only that he respected Tungs’s decision to step down.
"If Mr Tung’s resignation is approved, I will feel a sense of loss," he said.
Tung endured a torrid time in office. The first years of his tenure coincided with the Asian financial crisis, record unemployment, and a crash in the city’s property market which hit many ordinary citizens hard.
The possibility he would exit early had been mooted since 2003 when his government was plunged into crisis after more than 500,000 people took to the streets to protest proposed anti-subversion laws proposed by China.
His position was further weakened last year by a bruising battle with pro-democracy groups over the timing of democratic reforms.
Another half million people marched through the streets in July 2004 to demand universal suffrage to elect Tung’s successor in 2007.
His tenure reached its nadir in December when Tung and his cabinet were given a public dressing down by Chinese President Hu Jintao for their poor performance.
A small group of protesters shouted anti-Tung slogans Thursday outside the downtown government offices where Tung was announcing his resignation.
The ringleader, a radical lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung known as "Long Hair" for his long tresses, scuffled with some 15 security guards during the nearly two-hour protest.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Cheng criticised Tung for waiting so long to make his announcement. "What he did was disrespectful to legislators," he said.
Democratic Party vice chairman Albert Ho echoed his views.
"The chief executive was only holding himself responsible to the central government but not to the Hong Kong people," he said.
The financial community meanwhile wrote off Tung’s resignation, with ratings agency Standard & Poor’s and Standard Chartered Bank saying it would have little impact on the markets.
Tung was due to travel to Beijing Friday to made a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a talk-shop that advises the national leadership.