All Around Town: Hong Kong-style yellow umbrellas hoisted ... in Cologne
Yellow umbrellas hoisted ... in Cologne
The signature yellow umbrellas are up again – but this time in Cologne, Germany, where Occupy Central co-founder the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming received the Pfarrer-Georg-Fritze Memorial Gift for his contribution to the city’s battle for democracy. What made the ceremony more meaningful was that Chu received the award from Dr Claudia Waehrisch-Oblau, whom he once worked with on an underground mission more than two decades ago. “In the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre on June 3, 1989, both of us … [were] part of an informal network that brought student leaders from the People’s Republic of China to Hong Kong, and then found places for them in exile all over the world,” Waehrisch-Oblau said at the ceremony, adding two dissidents were eventually resettled in Germany. The prestigious award also came with a €10,000 (HK$88,000) cash prize, which Chu pledged to donate to a fund supporting democratic development.
Jeffie Lam
Internal division hits Democratic Party
While the pro-democracy camp is set to face severe infighting in the upcoming Legislative Council elections with the emergence of new young parties, the Democratic Party also found itself facing a split over electoral strategy. The party’s Hong Kong Island branch had earlier recommended that Central and Western district councillor Ted Hui Chi-fung should contest the September elections after he outperformed his rival, Winfield Chong Wing-fai, in opinion polls. Some members subsequently wrote to the party’s central committee in a bid to overturn the decision as they thought Chong had done more concrete work in the community and was also more capable of uniting other party colleagues in election campaigns than Hui, whose relationship with colleagues is not as good. The party’s decision-making body will meet on Thursday to study the issue, but a committee member told All Around Town that there was only a slim chance that the decision would be overturned as it would place the party in a difficult situation by compromising existing rules and procedures.
Jeffie Lam
Priscilla’s God-given role in politics
Being pro-establishment is a political role given by God. That was lawmaker Priscilla Leung Mei-fun’s answer to critics who questioned why her Protestant faith did not make her more critical of the government. At a Christian forum on Sunday, Leung said that pro-establishment lawmakers were often misunderstood or criticised on the internet or in the mass media. But she decided to do her job, such as proposing legislative amendments after five pan-democrat lawmakers resigned in 2010 to trigger a by-election which they called a “de facto referendum” on democracy. Citing the Bible, Leung said: “Being a pro-establishment Christian is like taking the yoke from God ... This is the political role God gave me.” Leung also revealed that she experienced difficulties in her political career in 2011, but regained her courage after praying on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem. Leung was slammed for her electoral amendment proposal and only narrowly won her district council contest that year.
Tony Cheung
