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Alan Leong Kah-kit. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Civic Party rejects Carrie Lam's overtures on 2017 poll reform

As Civic Party rejects Carrie Lam's overtures, officials plot campaign to win public support

The Civic Party will stick to its guns and vote against the political reform package, its leader said after talks with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor yesterday, as the government plotted a massive publicity drive to win public support.

The meeting was the latest step in Lam's push to win support from at least four pan-democratic lawmakers for the final blueprint for the 2017 chief executive election. Their support is needed for the plan, which will be released on Wednesday, to get the required two-thirds majority in the Legislative Council.

But party leader Alan Leong Kah-kit said the meeting left him convinced that pan-democrats should vote down the package. He said Lam told him Beijing was "unshakeable" in its insistence that Hongkongers would only be allowed to elect their leader under a restrictive model that limited the race to two or three candidates, who would need majority support from a 1,200-strong nominating committee.

"It only made me more certain that Hongkongers should stop fantasising about the central government [changing its stance]," he said. "We can wholeheartedly vote down the proposal … then restart the steps for political reform all over again."

The 27 pan-democratic lawmakers have all vowed to veto any plan based on Beijing's framework, which they say will deny Hongkongers a real choice.

Lam's meeting with Leong and party colleague Dennis Kwok was one of several with pan-democratic lawmakers. She also met Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing, Frederick Fung Kin-kee of the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood and education sector lawmaker Ip Kin-yuen. So far, all are standing firm.

The government would now seek to turn public opinion in favour of the reform package. A publicity drive would begin next Saturday, government sources said. Most officials will take to the streets to promote the package.

The stunt invokes memories of the "Act Now" street campaign launched by former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen to promote a previous electoral reform plan in 2010. That package was approved after a last-minute deal with the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, one of the few high-profile pan-democrats to back the 2017 plan said his colleagues should explain how the city could achieve democracy if the package was rejected.

Nelson Wong Sing-chi said voting down the proposal would leave no room for any democratisation in 2017. Beijing says the 2017 poll will run under the same rules as 2012 - with the 1,200-strong committee picking the winner - if reform falls through.

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Vote down reform and start again, Leong says
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