Prepare for fresh wave of suffrage strife
When, just over a year ago, Beijing approved universal suffrage for the election of Hong Kong's chief executive and legislature in 2017 and 2020 respectively, a new era dawned.
A senior official of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, Qiao Xiaoyang , held out hope that the suspicions and bickering would stop with the removal of doubt about the timetable for universal suffrage, and society would be able to focus on economic and livelihood issues.
The NPC ruling dampened significantly the momentum of the campaign for universal suffrage. For evidence of that, we need look no farther than last July 1, when turnout for the annual pro-democracy march was unimpressive and livelihood issues eclipsed the clamour for the early introduction of 'one man, one vote' elections. And universal suffrage was sidelined as a campaign issue in the run-up to September's Legislative Council election.
Put plainly, the issue of universal suffrage disappeared from the political agenda. But the outcome of a meeting of pan-democrat legislators on Friday suggests it could return. On Tuesday, the Civic Party plans to begin a sit-in lasting 20 hours and 12 minutes outside the Legco building. On Wednesday, party legislator Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee will move a Legco motion calling on the government to state clearly that the legislature's functional constituencies will be scrapped for the 2012 election.
In a sign of the depths of resistance to universal suffrage among functional constituencies, Abraham Razack, who represents the real estate sector, will oppose the motion's reference to scrapping the trade-based seats.
Admittedly, the chance of Beijing reversing its decision on the electoral timetable is slim, even though opinion polls show most people still favour universal suffrage in 2012.
For the sake of unity, it is not surprising the pan-democrats will continue to campaign for full democracy in 2012. Their bottom line is apparent from Ms Ng's motion.
The mainstream pan-democratic parties are likely to accept the NPC's 'second-best' time frame, provided the system for election by universal suffrage is genuinely democratic. It is therefore critically important that the government proposes a clear, substantive step towards universal suffrage in the 2012 elections. Like it or not, the issue of universal suffrage in 2017 and 2020 will have to be addressed in the upcoming constitutional debate.
However, that does not appear to be in the game plan of Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen. He has said he will leave the issue to his successor. In an interview with the online Hong Kong Journal last month, he said he was 'not optimistic' society would come to a consensus on the arrangements for the 2017 and 2020 polls when designing a system for those in 2012.
Politicians were 'miles apart', he argued, some wanting 'a pure one-man, one-vote single chamber' while others wanted functional seats retained, but reconstituted to meet the criteria of universal suffrage.
That sounds a fair assessment. But the reality is that any system that masquerades as constituting universal suffrage while retaining functional constituencies is doomed to be vetoed by the pan-democrats. A recurrence of the veto in 2005 of proposed reforms for the polls in 2007 and last year, which brought democratic development to a standstill, cannot be ruled out.
The government should use its consultation paper on changes for 2012 to send a clear message that the existing functional constituencies, with their narrow electoral base, will have to go.
Doing so would quash the false hopes of vested interests that they can continue to enjoy a political free lunch and underline that they must prepare for 'one person, one vote'. A failure to send such a clear message will not only do nothing to help bridge the divisions over universal suffrage, it will make them bigger. That will merely perpetuate the decades of bickering.
