Letters | On democracy, Hong Kong can’t have its cake and eat it too
- Why a Western-style chief executive election would be a mistake for Hong Kong
For the purpose of “selecting” the Hong Kong chief executive, Mr Du should consider also the fact that this office has a much higher degree of authority, through which Hong Kong derives the high degree of autonomy, than that of the mayor of Toronto or, for that matter, heads of municipal governments in other countries.
Such a high degree of authority is not the result of a local democratic mandate, but of the authorisation by the central people’s government through the decision to appoint the chief executive. Hence, the provision under Article 45 of the Basic Law, which Mr Du mentioned but did not quote: “The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People’s Government.”
It has been clear since the days of drafting the Basic Law in the late 1980s that the selection of the chief executive is not purely a local Hong Kong matter.
Hong Kong is not a sovereign country like Canada, and the Hong Kong chief executive is not a Toronto mayor.
We could either follow the Basic Law or opt for Toronto-style democracy and end up with a Toronto-like degree of autonomy, meaning yielding up to Beijing the high degree of autonomy that we now enjoy.