Orchestrated vote-rigging should worry Hong Kong
There used to be a very popular expression in Ireland at election time that accurately described the shenanigans which went on: 'Vote early, vote often.' Similar stories and jokes were made in other places about vote-rigging in all its various forms, including ballot stuffing, dead people voting, the same person voting multiple times, and so on. Chicago was notorious for its creativity in this area.
In more recent times, the stories have tended to come from dictatorships in Africa or South America where the leaders award themselves close to, or sometimes exceeding, 100per cent of the vote. Lately, even a major power like Russia seems, sadly, to be slipping backwards in the direction of election misconduct.
But now Hong Kong runs the risk of becoming a joke of its own.
Constitutionally, our district council elections rank fairly low in importance by themselves, though the crossover effect on the chief executive election is adding to their significance. This makes the allegations of vote-rigging in the recent poll much more serious. The full ramifications of the apparent misconduct are not yet known for certain, but already several aspects seem fairly clear and they are alarming.
First is the scale: seven people have already been before the courts, and over 30 in total now have been arrested. More than 400 possible cases have been reported to the Independent Commission Against Corruption for investigation. It seems likely there will be more. What we have seen so far is the tip of the iceberg. This is a major scandal.
Second is the degree of co-ordination. This was no random event with various individuals independently deciding to abuse the system in coincidentally similar ways. They used the same fake addresses of buildings which in some cases none of them had ever occupied, and in other cases had never existed (floor numbers the building had never had) or had been demolished years earlier. The abuse was planned and organised.
Third is the degree of focus. The people concerned were being shipped in to vote in specifically targeted constituencies. Invariably these were marginal seats where the incumbent was a pan-democrat or where a pan-democrat was thought to have a fair chance of capturing the seat from a pro-government 'independent'.
Finally, there is the amazing degree of complacency and inaction by the government which permitted the abuse to take place this time round. For, all the opportunities for vote-rigging now surfacing were in fact identified by the Director of Audit in his report five years ago. Yet (almost) nothing was done to close the loopholes.
The then minister for constitutional affairs, Stephen Lam Sui-lung, obviously felt it was more important to stop legislators resigning to trigger by-elections than to have honest elections. Now promoted to chief secretary, he was in the happy position as the scandal broke of being able to defend his own past conduct.
The chief secretary during the years of masterly inaction (2007-11) has now resigned to run for the top job of chief executive on the basis of superior administrative experience. Mmm.
Does that mean the government also had a more direct role in the abuse, as well as the indirect role of not plugging loopholes? It seems unlikely. Draw out the key features: large-scale, well-co-ordinated, focused. Even taking them individually, it is hard to see the administration's hand.
But can anyone think of another organisation present in Hong Kong that does have the capacity to think and act on a grand scale in an organised and focused way? Unfortunately, I can think of one, and it is not a reassuring thought.
And if the same organisation is now getting involved in the race for the chief executive slot in a similar manner, then we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of 'one country, two systems'. Not all jokes make you laugh.
