City needs to design its own democratic system | Article | China Daily (chinadailyhk.com)
Article 45 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region stipulates: “The chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People’s Government.”
Meanwhile, Annex I of the Basic Law — Method for the Selection of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region — stipulates: “The Chief Executive shall be elected in accordance with this Law by an Election Committee which is broadly representative, suited to the actual situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and represents the overall interests of society, and shall be appointed by the Central People’s Government.” Clearly, the Basic Law does not require a minimum number of candidates in the CE election, but does emphasize that the CE election method is “suited to the actual situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region”.
Hong Kong is better off cultivating its own strain of democracy instead of copying the Chinese-mainland model or a Western brand as-is
I believe the upcoming CE election will proceed according to relevant laws and regulations and be fair and just, whether there will be only one candidate or multiple candidates notwithstanding.
Democracy is a means of social governance. The ultimate determinant of a democratic model’s merit lies in whether it ensures good governance. As for “electoral democracy”, one should not focus on how exciting or competitive the election process looks, but assess its outcomes from the “whole-process democracy” perspective instead. The upcoming CE election under the revamped electoral system signals that “whole-process democracy” is now in practice in the HKSAR.
Since Hong Kong returned to the motherland in 1997, the city has experienced social turmoil every few years because Hong Kong society was split into two or more political camps. As a result, every CE election and Legislative Council election over the years saw Hong Kong society torn apart one way or another. In some extreme cases, families fell apart because family members supported different candidates and refused to respect each other’s choices, resulting in divorce, a father disowning his son, or friends becoming enemies. The “color revolution” of 2019 was an extreme example of such social division.
Several candidates vying for one public office may seem “democratic”, but in reality, some candidates would resort to a smear campaign against their rivals when the fight for votes heated up. We saw certain candidates in previous LegCo elections trade the overall interest of Hong Kong society for votes. We also found certain candidates going for a tongue-in-cheek response to the all-important fact that the central government exercises overall jurisdiction over the HKSAR, switching sides back and forth, or even using the difference between “two systems” as an excuse to oppose “one country” as the prerequisite for “two systems”. Democratic elections benefit from fair competition, but competition will be destructive when some candidates choose votes over principles.
There is another way to see that past democratic elections were flawed. Since Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, the wealth gap between the rich and poor has widened, and low-income households have increased, while many young people found upward mobility very difficult if not impossible; the wait for home ownership may never end … and the list of problems goes on. It is fair to say “Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong” has not been very fruitful. Admittedly, many of those problems are much older than the HKSAR, while others are caused by the ever-changing reality. That is not to say that all chief executives and lawmakers in the past 25 years were responsible for none of these disappointments or problems. Five CE elections took place in the past 25 years, and four of them saw at least two candidates compete fiercely for the CE’s office, not to mention the equally — if not much — competitive LegCo elections. The truth is, “intense competition” does not guarantee the best administrators are elected every time.
Under “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong is better off cultivating its own strain of democracy instead of copying the Chinese-mainland model or a Western brand as-is. Hong Kong’s improved electoral system puts more emphasis on the scrutiny of candidate eligibility and qualification, on broad representativeness, on Hong Kong’s actual situation, and on embodiment of the overall interest of Hong Kong society. That is why the new electoral system is superior to the old one, and provides the foundation for the actualization of a “custom-designed form of democracy” for Hong Kong that also incorporates the concept of “whole-process democracy” of the motherland.
What is “whole-process democracy”? The answer can be found in a speech by President Xi Jinping, in which he stressed that, to determine whether a country is democratic or not, one must verify if the people have the right to vote and, even more importantly, if the people have the right to participate in various elections; verify if the people are promised specific benefits by candidates during the election process and, even more importantly, how many of those promises are duly delivered; find out what kind of political processes and political rules the systems and relevant laws cover and, even more importantly, find out whether those systems and laws are truly effective; find out if the rules for and processes of exercising powers are democratic and, even more importantly, if those powers are under public supervision and scrutiny. It is not true democracy if the people are made aware of their rights and responsibilities only when they vote and are overlooked again afterward, hearing nothing except sensational slogans during election campaigns and having no say afterward, or candidates befriend voters only during election campaign and forget about them afterward.
Having gone through the disastrous, months-long social unrest in 2019, Hong Kong society in general now views democracy from a much broader prospective, rather than focusing only on some Western “standards” as they did previously, boding well for the eventual actualization of whole-process democracy through Hong Kong-styled democracy.
The author is a Hong Kong member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the Hong Kong New Era Development Thinktank.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
