October, 2004

The Legco Election and Hong Kong's Struggle for Democracy

Rose Wu

To many people, this year's Legislative Council (Legco) election on Sept. 12 was seen as the most important election in Hong Kong's struggle toward democracy. Following the significant events of the July 1 demonstrations the past two years and the district council election last November, there is no doubt that many people in Hong Kong now believe that the only hope to make a difference for Hong Kong's future is to come out and express their will by exercising their civil rights through demonstrations. Although many people have low expectations that the political parties and Legco will improve governance since the powers of Legco to initiate bills are limited under the Basic Law and the existing political system, people still feel that this is an opportunity to express their hopes and commitment to society and want their votes counted. Although the power of the legislature is unsatisfactory, it is still sufficient to make a difference as its responsibilities include passing and amending laws, approving taxes and government expenditures as well as debating any issue of public importance.

Although the pro-democracy candidates claimed that Hong Kong's people want democracy and that therefore they should get the majority of votes during the election, the result turned out to be disappointing regarding the number of seats attained. Despite a record voter turnout of 55.63 percent, the pro-democracy camp, with more than 60 percent of the total votes, suffered losses in Hong Kong Island and the New Territories, winning only 25 of the 30 directly elected seats. More surprisingly, four of the six new directly elected seats were grabbed by pro-government candidates, leaving the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) the largest political party in Legco.

As we evaluate the election, there were many hurdles that the pro-democracy camp had to overcome: the suspected interference of Chinese authorities prior to the election, the scandals involving two candidates and the unfair electoral system and its narrow scope for democratic representation.

Efforts to influence the election began several months before people went to the polls. First of all, in May, Hong Kong lost two popular radio talk show hosts, Albert Cheng King-hon and Wong Yuk-man, who were critical of the governments in Hong Kong and Beijing. Without clearly explaining their reasons, both Cheng and Wong, who were previously physically attacked, said that, because of intense pressure and threats, they felt forced to quit. A week later Allen Lee Peng-fei, a Hong Kong delegate to the National People's Congress (NPC) who had been invited to replace Cheng, suddenly decided to leave the job as well because he felt a threat was made against his family and he was isolated from his friends. He said that he had never seen Hong Kong so polarised by political pressure as now. He even resigned from the NPC. At the same time, an RTHK radio host who had been heavily criticised by the local pro-Beijing camp was moved from his popular phone-in programme to another time slot. The above incidents sounded an alarm: Hong Kong's freedom of expression and freedom of the press had reached a critical point.

Two months later Commercial Radio suddenly announced a change in style from what it called "emotional appeals" to "rationality" and blamed the run-away programme hosts for not defending freedom of speech. Based on this reasoning, the radio terminated Cheng's contract on July 29. A few days later Cheng alleged the station had tried to stop him from standing for Legco. Cheng subsequently launched a formal complaint with the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) and gave up his Canadian passport in order to compete in the elections.

As we closely examine what occurred in the past few months, it is believed that Beijing attempted to exert its influence to secure for the pro-China camp as many seats as possible in September's Legco election. The real reason for them to rule out universal suffrage in Hong Kong was to secure Beijing's control over Hong Kong and protect local business interests.

Meanwhile, while many opinion polls indicated in the earlier stages of the election campaign that voters would give the Democratic Party positive support, the party lost ground to its rivals in the wake of a sex scandal involving one of its Legco candidates. The incident involving Alex Ho Wei-to occurred 27 days before the election when he was arrested with a prostitute in a hotel room in Guangdong Province and was sentenced to re-education through labour for six months. The candidate's arrest and detention caused an uproar among Democratic Party members, who questioned whether it was a political plot designed to smear their campaign for the election.

Another scandal engulfed the party shortly after Alex Ho's arrest when veteran legislator James To-Kun-sun was accused of inflating the rent of his party office in one of the districts, and thus misusing public funds that pay the rent, and of failing to declare his interest in the firm that owns the property. Since then, surveys showed support for the party's candidates had dropped in all geographical constituencies.

The third hurdle is the design of Hong Kong's electoral system, a flawed model that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the popularity of the pro-democracy camp to be accurately reflected in the number of seats that they win.

The system, first of all, is divided into two constituencies—geographical and functional—with the 60 Legco seats equally divided into 30 seats in each constituency.

In the functional constituency, which primarily represents professionals and the business community, the size of the electorate has been significantly reduced since the handover in 1997 with the vote of all employees in the sector cancelled and a less democratic system of corporate voting reintroduced. Moreover, the 300,000 voters in the functional constituencies have the unfair privilege of at least two votes—one in their functional constituency and one in their geographical constituency—while the remainder of the 3.2 million registered voters in the geographical constituencies have only their one vote in their geographical area. This year, in fact, 11 candidates in the functional constituencies gained their Legco seat uncontested.

Meanwhile, in the geographical constituencies, proportional representation was introduced for the first Legco election after the handover in 1998 to overturn the pre-1997 electoral reforms. This system is designed to ensure that minority voices have a voice in the legislature. While this is a noble goal, in the case of Hong Kong, it was introduced to ensure that pro-Beijing and pro-business candidates would attain seats that they would most likely not win in a first-past-the-post system.

Another feature of voting for the 30 seats in the geographical constituencies is that the list system is used whereby voters do not choose individual candidates but choose from lists of candidates who have grouped themselves together and ranked themselves in order of priority. Candidates are elected individually in order of vote share for each list. For instance, in the Sept. 12 election in the Hong Kong Island constituency with six lists for six seats, 354,095 votes were cast. Thus, each candidate initially had to receive 59,000 votes to win a seat. The Democratic Party received 131,788 votes, the pro-Beijing DAB received 74,659 and the pro-democracy list of Audrey Eu and Cyd Ho received 73,844. Thus, the first person on all three lists earned a seat. After subtracting the initial 59,000 votes, the three lists were left with 72,788, 15,659 and 14,844 votes respectively. This ensured the Democratic Party a second seat but caused the defeat of Cyd Ho by 815 votes and the election of the DAB's second candidate, Choy So-yuk. Thus, 13,788 votes of the Democratic Party were "wasted." As a result, people criticise the Democratic Party for panicking at the last minute and asking people to vote for their list as it was thought that the Eu-Ho list had an ample number of votes. Consequently, the Democratic Party won a seat but lost the people's trust.

An additional fourth hurdle is that the pro-democracy candidates did not seem to accord much priority to a detailed political platform that included issues except political reform, placing their emphasis on democracy only and their image. Although much of the work of Hong Kong's legislature deals with socio-economic issues, they have never played an important part in determining the agendas of the elections since 1984 after the Joint Declaration was signed by the British and Chinese governments.

As we learned from people on the street, it is not that people do not care about social and livelihood matters, but most of the time these concerns are overshadowed by anxieties over Hong Kong's political future, both before and after the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997. In previous Legco elections, votes were primarily split between pro-Beijing candidates and those advocating a faster pace of democratic development. Because of the preoccupation of candidates with this overriding issue, debates on the candidates' stance on socio-economic issues, such as their positions on social welfare, minimum wages, discrimination against racial and sexual minorities, education reform, etc., have been marginalised from the mainstream political agendas during the election. This reminds us once again that the meaning of democracy is not only about political issues: it also touches a wider range of policy areas which affect people's daily livelihood and social relationships.

To overcome the above hurdles, we must begin with a democracy movement that is strongly rooted in the community and that adopts a people-oriented approach, for we should not corner ourselves by just standing in opposition to the authorities in Beijing; rather, we should put our emphasis on our commitment to the people's welfare and should advocate respect for human rights and social justice as our common vision for the common good. Secondly, we should continue to call for universal suffrage in the 2007 and 2008 elections and should abolish the functional constituencies in order to build a truly democratic and representative legislature. Thirdly, we should stand firm on the principle of "one country, two systems" and insist that the Chinese authorities respect Hong Kong's promised high degree of autonomy and let Hong Kong people determine our own future.

In addition to the above evaluation of the pro-democracy camp's performance in the recent election, there were some positive results. The first encouraging outcome was that veteran protester Leung Kwok-hung, popularly known as "Long Hair," was elected a legislator with 60,925 votes—almost three times the number he secured in his first attempt in 2000. Leung, as a radical activist, ran on a radical platform, calling for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, an end to one-party rule on the mainland and increased expenditure on social welfare. He believed that people elected him because they supported his beliefs and their hope for change. His success indicates that more people are disillusioned with the performance of mainstream parties in a legislature crippled by constraints and they are more ready for a different style of political leader, one like Leung Kwok-hung who dares to speak out and take action. Although his image and style is radical and his identify is with the grassroots, he is a person of integrity that has gained the trust and support of the people.

Another positive sign of the election is that more that one million people (1,096,150) voted for pro-democracy candidates in the geographical constituencies, representing 62 percent of the total number of votes cast. Although the pro-democracy candidates hold different views on different issues, they all agreed to maintain a common position on universal suffrage in 2007 and 2008. In this case, the election had, with some justification, been billed as a referendum on universal suffrage. This message should not be overlooked by the governments in Hong Kong and Beijing.

Lastly, an overview of the election is not complete without criticising the incompetence of election officials. Complaints were made about the failure to provide sufficient ballot boxes, resulting in long lines and the temporary closure of a number of polling stations and some voters leaving. In addition, several election staff members opened ballot boxes during the voting period in order to refold the ballots to make more room for more ballots. The Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor condemned these errors as unacceptable because these actions could prevent some voters from voting and infringed upon the secret ballot. They also claimed that it is illegal under Hong Kong's existing law to open a ballot box during voting.

As a result of these problems, some defeated candidates in the functional constituencies stated that they will lodge petitions to void the results after it was revealed the number of ballots counted in some sectors exceeded those issued. For instance, there were 202 more votes than ballots issued in the health services sector, and similar discrepancies occurred in the social welfare sector where there were 63 more votes than ballots issued (the candidate won by 64 votes) and in the accountancy sector where there were 54 excess votes (the candidate won by 37 votes). Moreover, some voters claimed someone had impersonated them when they were refused a chance to vote as they were told they had already cast a ballot. Under mounting pressure from the public, the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) ordered the Registration and Electoral Affairs Office to examine what occurred at all 501 polling stations. However, the Democratic Party urged the government to form an independent committee to investigate the case rather than leave it to the commission.