Justice Lai looks at the road to democracy for Hong Kong and considers how important an issue it still is.

Will we ever have democracy? It’s a question that’s been on Hong Kongers’ minds for over a decade now. Beijing and Chief Executive Donald Tsang have effectively said we will by 2017 and 2020 (for the election of chief executive and Legco respectively), but some of their opponents remain skeptical. At the same time, a growing number of people are beginning to feel that we should be focusing on other questions. With the poverty gap continuing to widen and pollution levels becoming ever more alarming, they say the political back and forth about universal suffrage is sounding increasingly removed from the immediate concerns of the people.

 The latest chatter on the subject of democracy revolves around the government’s reform package for 2012, to be put forward on November 18. At the time of writing, the package is expected to include an expansion of the election committee that chooses the chief executive from 796 to 1,200 (through the addition of about 405 district councilors), and the number of the committee members that nominate a candidate for chief executive will most likely be increased from 100 to 150. Meanwhile, the Legislative Council is expected to be expanded by 10 seats, five of them geographical constituency seats and five of them functional constituency seats.

 All of this doesn’t amount to a whole lot of change in the eyes of the government’s critics. Indeed, in addition to lack of change, Civic Party legislator Audrey Eu emphasizes that the reform package involves the addition of functional constituency seats, when a genuine move towards democracy ought to involve their removal. Critics of the government such as Eu believe this is a significant indicator of things to come in 2017 and 2020. “Whether we’re likely to have democracy depends on your definition of democracy,” she says. “In our eyes, democracy involves equal representation, which would mean the abolition of functional constituencies. But authorities in Beijing have said they believe functional constituencies are compatible with democracy, which means they’re likely to stay in place with a few adaptations made to them.”

Emily Lau, of the Democratic Party, is equally wary. “There’s a concern that the elections which will be held won’t be free and fair, and that not everyone will be able to stand for them, only certain pro-Beijing figures,” she says.

Others are more sanguine about the prospect of  democracy’s scheduled arrival. Political commentator Michael Chugani stresses that both Tsang and the National People’s Congress Standing Comittee have publicly gone on record affirming the afore-mentioned years as due dates for democracy. Consequently, he believes there’s little room for them to turn back. “They’ve basically tied themselves in a corner,” he says. “They know that backtracking would be disastrous, and that if they did so they’d lose all credibility in front of the people.

So 2017 and 2020 are essentially cast in stone.”  Kennedy Wong, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, agrees. “Even if we don’t make much progress with the reforms for 2012, Beijing has made it clear that we will have direct elections by the years given,” he says. “It’s now up to us in Hong Kong to reach a consensus on how to amend the election laws.”

That said, pan-democrat legislators are most likely to reject the proposals in the government’s reform package when they are made public. Some have described them as more conservative than those put forward for the 2007-2008 elections, which the pan-democrats voted down following large public protests in 2005. Moreover, the government is unlikely to be including any road map towards future universal suffrage in the package. This is despite previous remarks by Donald Tsang indicating that such a road map would be in order once the dates for universal suffrage had been decided upon.

 At the moment, the pan-democrats are split over the forcefulness with which to respond to the proposals (see “The Not-So-United Democrats”, opposite page). The League of Social Democrats have come up with a radical plan for mass resignations by pan-democrat lawmakers following the release of the package, in the hopes of enabling a de facto referendum on universal suffrage. Under the plan, the by-elections following the resignations would be contested on a joint platform calling for either universal suffrage by 2012 or a detailed road map for the future. So far the Civic Party has expressed support for the plan, but the Democratic Party has opposed it on the grounds that it could alienate voters and result in a loss of seats.

In light of the split, it’s unsurprising that some observers feel the pan-democrats should be directing more of their joint energy towards topics other than universal suffrage. Chugani for one, while recognizing that democracy is an important issue, nonetheless feels it has often received much attention at the expense of other issues.

This appears particularly the case, he says, when one considers how issues rank in importance according to public opinion polls. “The polls show that it’s on people’s minds, but it’s not the top issue on their minds. People are more concerned about economic issues such as the growing gap between the rich and poor, the drop in salaries and living standards since the Asian economic crisis, and getting priced out of the property market.” He adds that while in places like Burma the issue of democracy would naturally still take precedence over these, in Hong Kong we already have much of what democracy has to offer. “The fact that we’re openly discussing this in the media already says a lot.”

 Of course, pan-democrat legislators do devote considerable portions of their time to issues other than democracy. Emily Lau points out that the majority of the meetings she attends in Legco are about matters unrelated to democracy. Audrey Eu meanwhile refers to due diligence reports on Legco proceedings by bodies such as SynergyNet and the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese, which put her Party at the top of the list when it comes to attendance and motions put forward on issues to do with ordinary people’s livelihoods.

 Nonetheless, democracy continues to be the issue around which the main battle lines are drawn in Hong Kong politics. How such lines will change over time and whether they will continue to captivate the public mind until 2017 remains to be seen.

The Not-So-United Democrats
The theory is simple­—it’s hard for you to launch anything unless all of you are on the same line. Well, not that much so at all, when it comes to the pan-democrats. In their pursuit of universal suffrage for the SAR, in the past few months we have seen each political party, or even individuals in the parties, coming out to voice their own very special opinion on the matter, in particular the issue concerning a proposal to get all pan-democratic legislators to resign. Political professor Ivan Choy of Chinese University commented that if the pan-democrats continue to voice their different opinions in high profile, it would only worsen the conflict among them internally and, in turn, have an adverse effect on their popularity in the society. Here is how different they really are­—

League of Social Democrats (LSD)
The radical new party led by “Mad Dog” Wong Yuk-man proposed that all 23 pan-democratic legislators should resign, forcing the government to run by elections for their seats, by default using the by-elections as testing ground on how much the public really supports universal suffrage.

Civic Party
They originally claimed LSD’s plan was a beautiful fantasy. Then they took a U-turn and announced their amended version of LSD’s plan, proposing five pan-democratic legislators to resign, including their own Tanya Chan, Fredrick Fung of People’s Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, Lee Wing-tat of Democratic Party, and “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung of LSD. They did not consult any of these people before announcing the list to the press.

Ronny Tong of Civic Party
Tong revealed in Apple Daily that he doesn’t agree with his own party’s proposal and would consider leaving if they continued to pursue the plan.

People’s Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL)
Its founding chairman Fredrick Fung blasted the Civic Party in a press conference, saying they had not consulted him at all before announcing a list with his name on it. He criticized Civic Party of being insincere, undemocratic and not serious about the matter.

Democratic Party
The largest party of the camp says they have no consensus among the party of whether they should support these proposals, says its chairman Albert Ho.

League of Social Democrats legislators are seen standing up, protesting against Chief Executive Donald Tsang in Legco last month, regarding the upcoming political reform proposals. Their colleagues from the Civic Party on their right only sit and stare at them.