Scholarism invites political heavyweights for dialogue on Hong Kong's political reform
Scholarism asks political heavyweights to meet for 'open discussion' on 2017 election afterC.Y. Leung's administration 'turned a deaf ear'
Scholarism, the student group that spearheaded the Occupy campaign, yesterday invited four of the city's political heavyweights to meet for talks on reform as the current administration has "turned a deaf ear" to their calls for debate on the issue.
With the government expected to launch the second-phase consultation on the contentious reform this week, Scholarism abandoned civil disobedience and reached out to failed chief executive contender, former chief secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, and former financial secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung for an "open discussion".
Also on the invitation list are Executive Council convenor Lam Woon-kwong and fellow Exco member Bernard Chan.
The talks - if accepted by the four politicians - might touch on ways to relaunch the whole consultation process from scratch to better reflect Hongkongers' views, the group said.
Pan-democratic lawmakers have already vowed to boycott the government consultations and veto universal suffrage if Beijing insists on incorporating a nominating committee with a narrow base in the 2017 chief executive elections.
It is widely feared the committee would screen out candidates not acceptable to Beijing.
While Scholarism rejected further consultations under the same conditions, its leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung said there was no plan to stage another civil disobedience campaign on the scale of Occupy, which saw thousands of protesters take to the streets and clash with police last year.
Instead, the latest appeal for talks aimed to resolve political disputes, he said.
"[Chief Executive] Leung Chun-ying has failed to fulfil his basic political duty to talk to us, and that's why we have to issue this open letter to invite other influential politicians for a negotiation," Wong said.
Without rejecting the students' request outright, Tang - an outspoken critic of Leung Chun-ying - said he would get to know more about the next round of consultation "before deciding what to do next". Lam declined to comment while the other two have yet to respond.
The four invited politicians gave them "hope", the group said. Tang once criticised Leung for failing to achieve a smooth political atmosphere, while Antony Leung had said teenagers formed the "hope of Hong Kong".
Lam was "well known" for his connection with the civic society, while Chan was quoted as having described a nominating committee comprising 1,200 members as "not a good arrangement".
Scholarism vowed to protest when the government met the public on the reform.
Even legal heavyweight Albert Chen Hung-yee's idea of taking the number of blank votes into consideration in the poll was not acceptable to Wong, as long as Beijing's restrictions remained.
