The government has triggered heated debate with the pan-democrat camp over whether its latest blueprint for political reform represents a meaningful increase in democracy for the 2012 elections. There can be no argument, however, that the administration has not helped its case with a sin of omission. That is its failure to abolish corporate voting, an affront to the democratic aspirations of most Hong Kong people.
The excuse for proposing to do nothing about it compounds the sin. In its consultation paper, the government says ending corporate voting would be a complicated process in which it would be difficult to reach consensus. Apart from shirking the issue, that implies that some influential people would be reluctant to give up the right to control at least three votes, and often more, in Legislative Council functional constituencies, not to mention also having a greater say in the composition of the Election Committee that returns the chief executive. Of course they would be. Given that these constituencies return half the lawmakers, they enjoy a kind of undemocratic advantage long abolished elsewhere.
About 1,800 people registered as individual electors in both geographical and functional constituencies are also entitled to vote as representatives of corporates, which means they have three votes in a Legco poll. This also allows wealthy individuals, through their control of a number of companies, to acquire power over multiple votes cast by their representatives. A saving grace for retaining this arrangement is difficult to find. It does not serve the principle of balanced representation of the interests of different sectors of society - quite the contrary.
And getting rid of it now would hardly offend the principle of gradual and orderly progress towards universal suffrage, which Beijing says is possible for the chief executive election in 2017 and Legco elections in 2020. Progress is more than gradual enough.
The government has had years to come up with an alternative. Citing complexity now is a weak excuse, given that corporate voting has no place in a blueprint touted as paving the way for more substantial political reform after 2012.
Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen have both conceded functional constituencies are incompatible with free and equal universal suffrage, but not that they cannot be made so. Apologists for them argue that more than one electoral model can be found in bastions of democracy. But what sets these places apart is that one man, one vote prevails. The notion of one man, three, four, five or however many votes is ridiculous, considering how easily anyone can set up a company to acquire another corporate vote. Tang says that one man, two votes would be 'fair and equal' if everyone could vote for trade-based seats, implying that they are here to stay. But that would only be true if trade-based lawmakers were stripped of their veto power in Legco.