Unite or fail, alliance leader Joseph Cheng tells pan-democratic parties

Pan-democratic parties must unite or risk letting down their supporters and hindering the fight for universal suffrage, a leading democracy campaigner warned yesterday.

Professor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, convenor of the Alliance for True Democracy, was speaking amid heated debate between the Democratic Party and People Power on whether to treat all three planks of a proposal on how to nominate candidates for chief executive as "indispensable".

Cheng confirmed yesterday that the alliance had agreed not to include the term "indispensable" in the proposal, which sets out three ways in which candidates could go forward to the public vote in the 2017 election: public nomination, nomination by parties or via the nominating committee stipulated in the Basic Law. The nominating committee would approve candidates nominated under the other two strands as a formality.

Instead, Cheng said, the alliance would emphasise that the proposal should be taken as a "whole". It is seen as a way to give the public a say in choosing candidates and overcome concern that the committee will filter out hopefuls critical of Beijing.

The Democratic Party opposes bundling the three strands, drawing criticism from the radical People Power.

"If we split, we will be letting our supporters down, and it will greatly weaken our power in struggling for universal suffrage," Cheng told RTHK. "We have always wanted to table one single proposal, as it would be better than each political party having a proposal of its own."

The alliance is made up of 26 of the 27 lawmakers in the pan-democratic camp.