Video | Face off: student leader Joshua Wong ambushes Carrie Lam over election reform proposal
Joshua Wong Chi-fung confronted Chief Secretary Carrie Lam in a rare face-to-face encounter this morning, as they passed each other in the corridor of a radio station’s offices.
Student activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung confronted Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in a rare face-to-face encounter this morning, as they passed each other in the corridor of a radio station’s offices.
Surrounded by journalists, Wong stopped Lam in the hallway at Commercial Radio and tried to give her a copy of the liberal studies’ assessment criteria. That was a reference to his criticism that the government’s public sentiment report released this week did not even qualify as "a piece of liberal studies homework" because it had distorted public demands for genuine democracy.
But Lam stuck rigidly to the government line during a brief exchange:
Wong: Secretary [Carrie] Lam Cheng [Yuet-ngor], I want to give you a report. Since you wrote a ‘public sentiment newspaper cutting’, I have especially [prepared a copy] of the assessment criteria for the secondary school liberal studies subject homework.
It says [student would score low points if they] "show a low level of competence in reflection on the enquiry", "communicate and analyse the findings from limited perspectives related to the issue concerned", and "with less than appropriate methods". I think this set of liberal students assessment criteria for secondary school pupils’ [homework] is a good reference for your "public sentiment newspaper cutting". I hope you can take this.
I also want to ask why did you conclude in the report that it is a common aspiration among Hongkongers to implement a system of universal suffrage based on the National People’s Congress’s 831 (August 31) framework? Do you think this is distorting facts?
Lam: The public sentiment report was compiled purely, I think you can also remember, because in preparing for the dialogue with the Federation of Students’ (in October), we have heard many people and students representatives suggesting that since something had happened after a decision was made on August 31, should we file a report to the central government? That was the suggestion at that time ...
Wong: But I would like to ask …
Lam: At that time I already said the public sentiment report will be an objective and comprehensive report, it is not part of the five-step constitutional process.
Wong: But I still like to ask is it true to say that "it is a common aspiration among Hongkongers to implement a system of universal suffrage based on the National People’s Congress’s 831 (August 31) framework?”
As Lam appeared reluctant to answer, a man believed to be a member of Commercial Radio staff said: “I’m sorry but our show is about to start.”
It appeared that Lam took Wong’s copy of the “Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination 2016 – Liberal Studies: School-based Assessment Teachers’ Handbook”.
WATCH: Carrie vs Joshua: the confrontation at a radio station's offices
The government's report was released on Tuesday to sum up the series of events and protests that took place in Hong Kong from August to December after Beijing laid down a stringent framework for the city’s political reform.
Wong later said on Scholarism’s Facebook page that if pupils do their "Independent Enquiry Study” homework the same way officials wrote the public sentiment report, they could only score up to 3 points on a scale of 9.
Wong and Lam were at Commercial Radio to appear as guests – separately – on a political affairs radio programme.
Wong said the document’s proposed arrangements for nominating candidates in the 2017 chief executive election would not offer any real choice.
The government suggests the threshold for would-be candidates to enter the nomination stage be lowered. The support they need from nominating committee members would be reduced from 150 to 100. But candidates would still need 600 nominations to stand as candidates for the final public vote.
Wong said that under this design many candidates, such as pan-democrats and even possibly some moderate pro-establishment politicians, would be screened from the final race.
“It is meaningless to be nominated but not allowed to go to the final voting stage. [It is like] allowing people to book seats at a restaurant but not allowing them to enter to eat,” he said.
Wong said the best option now was for the government to cancel the current consultation and restart the process of constitutional reform from step one.
He said that if Hongkongers and the Legislative Council accept the proposal as it stands, the current design will last forever and there will not be any further change.
Officials have said the election methods for chief executive can be fine-tuned after universal suffrage is implemented for the 2017 poll.
“The implementation of universal suffrage is seen as a ultimate goal, as mentioned in the Basic Law, so once it is achieved the government will think it has finished its historical mission and won’t make any further change to it afterwards,” Wong said.
Meanwhile, Lam defended the government’s decision to focus on the nomination procedure for 2017, rather than shaking up the composition of the nominating committee.
Lam said that since Beijing ruled on August 31 last year that the nominating committee would be modelled on the current 1,200-member Election Committee, which encompass 38 subsectors, “there must be some subsectors which are willing to give up their seats, so that we can create new subsectors … This is difficult, and from the response we gathered from different political parties, we are not optimistic.”
Discussions were held last year on whether the agricultural and fisheries subsector could give up some of its 60 seats to form a new subsector to represent women and youth, but the subsector’s lawmaker Steven Ho Chun-yin has suggested that his constituents shouldn’t be the only group making the sacrifice.
The insurance and financial services industries had also explored proposals to expand their electoral base.
Asked whether the government had failed to do its best to make the most democratic proposals based on Beijing’s stringent framework, Lam said: “After thinking about the issues back and forth, we believe that the focus should be on the nominating procedure, and we hope the pan-democrats [won’t] boycott the consultation before it even starts.”
The much-debated idea that the election would be invalidated if the majority of Hongkongers left their ballot papers blank was also left out of the consultation paper. Tam, however, said yesterday that the administration would “positively follow up” the idea – a view echoed by former mainland official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, Chen Zuoer.
Yet, Lam appeared less positive than her colleague this morning. “The key is whether creative proposals could secure the pan-democrats’ support,” she said. “Otherwise the efforts would be all in vain if the pan-democrats are still vetoing the reform package”.
Pan-democrat lawmakers have refused to accept the national legislature’s decision last year, which ruled that while Hong Kong can elect its leader by “one man, one vote” in 2017, it must choose from two or three candidates backed by half of a 1,200-strong nominating committee.
The Basic Law’s Article 50 states that if Legco refuses to pass an “important bill” introduced by the government, the chief executive may dissolve the council.
Speaking on the Commercial Radio programme, Lam said the stipulation does not apply to the political reform because the reform package would be a resolution that seeks to amend the Basic Law, while “important bill” refers to an amendment to local legislation.
Lam also indicated that she was unlikely to resign even if the reform package is vetoed this summer.
“This is a rather pessimistic idea,” Lam said. “I have said that the challenge is quite big to join the [current] cabinet, as I wish to solve various issues in my five-year term. Political reform is one, but poverty alleviation and population policy are my responsibilities too.”
Tam meanwhile, said this morning that the central government had become more cautious over the city’s political reform following Occupy protests. He said this left “very little room” to make major changes to the government’s proposals.
“After what has happened in the past few months, including the Occupy Central protests, the central government has become more cautious and conservative,” he said on a DBC radio show.
Additional reporting by Laurence Chu
