TUNG Chee-hwa's administration is always looking for any reason to deprive Hong Kong of democracy. And today it may get a new excuse, if the District Councils election turnout is as dismal as some have suggested.
Predicting how many people will vote is a tricky business. Last year, the pollsters all forecast a poor turnout for the Legislative Council polls in May, after what was generally seen as a lacklustre campaign, only to be confounded by the 53.3 per cent who voted.
But even the Government is not expecting this feat to be replicated today. Secretary for Home Affairs David Lan Hong-tsung has already argued it is wrong to draw comparisons with last year's record turnout.
Not surprisingly, he prefers to use the much lower benchmark of the 33.1 per cent who voted in the 1994 District Boards election as a reference point.
Poll results published today suggested this modest target might be met or possibly even slightly exceeded. But if this forecast proves too optimistic, Mr Lan will have the difficult task of explaining whether he really believes the community has 'already given up on Hong Kong'. He said last week that this was the only reason for people not to vote.
Quite apart from Mr Lan's possible embarrassment, the election could have a key impact on the already snail-like pace of democratisation in Hong Kong. At issue is whether the large number who voted last May was a one-off: whether it was a product of special circumstances, such as popular enthusiasm to make the most of the first polls after the handover and help get rid of the much-disliked provisional legislature.
Or it may have marked the start of a permanent shift to a much higher level of public interest in the electoral process, which would make it harder for the Government to continue resisting pressure to show more enthusiasm about the introduction of full democracy.
