Universal suffrage without genuine choice is meaningless, says democracy academic Larry Diamond

The chief executive election cannot be considered democratic - even if the entire electorate is allowed to vote freely - if potential candidates are screened out by an undemocratic body, one of the world's leading academics on democracy has said.

Professor Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was speaking amid concern that Beijing will insist on a nomination system that screens out candidates it finds unacceptable for the 2017 race.

Diamond said universal suffrage would be meaningless without a genuine choice between candidates representing alternative points of view. He pointed to the situation in Iran, where universal suffrage exists but candidates are pre-screened by an undemocratic body.

Hongkongers had patiently abided by Beijing's rules in expectation of democracy, which was now threatened by "authoritarian intransigence", he said.

Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung had previously dismissed the idea of public and party nomination by saying it contravened the Basic Law. Diamond warned the government against applying a double standard when referencing the miniconstitution.

"If we accept that [the Basic Law] rules out any method [of public nomination] … so it must also be acknowledged that such a [nominating] committee must be 'broadly representative' and must operate 'in accordance with democratic procedures'.

"I do not know how such a broadly representative body can be constituted except … by a democratic election of the people of Hong Kong," Diamond said, adding the committee must not be "grossly over-representative" of elite groups.