I havent seen or heard anyone refuting the governments suggestion that allowing a vote on preselected candidates is democratic progress, probably because I dont read enough Chinese. But I think there are several reasons why having no elections for CE is better than voting for pre-screened candidates. Having public voting on preselected candidates will allow the winner to claim the mandate of the people, and use that as an excuse to implement more restrictions on HK people, such as previously proposed for Article 23 legislation, or to erode judicial independence or freedom of the press. At the moment, everyone knows that CY Leung only won the selection process because he was better at hiding his illegal building structures from journalists than Henry Tang did. So the current system of appointment by committee does not allow the CE to falsely claim he represents anyone but Beijing or his cronies, and therefore he cannot so easily override the wishes of the people. If the proposed preselected candidate elections go ahead, Beijing will claim that HK is then democratic, and no further progress will be possible. Furthermore, the legislative elections in 2020 could then adopt the same screening measures for candidates, allowing Beijing to hand pick the whole of the government.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 03:46:39 +0000
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