The Hong Kong Chief Executive Election

First, a quick summary of how it ended.

(The Globe and Mail)  Beijing loyalist clinches victory in Hong Kong.  By Geoffrey York.  June 16, 2005.

Despite his refusal to debate his opponents or face a public forum, veteran bureaucrat Donald Tsang has been chosen as Hong Kong's new leader in a tightly controlled selection process among the territory's elite.  The victory by Mr. Tsang, expected to be confirmed today by Hong Kong's electoral commission, has been carefully orchestrated by Beijing to install a loyal and popular leader in its often-restive southern enclave.

Beijing has been worried that the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong could destabilize the territory and spill over onto the mainland. It has bluntly rejected the calls for fully democratic elections within the next few years.  Pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung, known as Longhair, who protested at Mr. Tsang's campaign office, interrupted. "Shame on you, Donald Tsang," he shouted as he scuffled with security guards. "Small-circle election -- it's worse than pigs and dogs."

Mr. Tsang clinched his victory yesterday by submitting 674 nomination forms to the Hong Kong electoral commission. Those nominations, along with another 36 pledges of support, gave him an overwhelming majority of 710 votes among the 796 members of the election committee that chooses the territory's leader, known as the chief executive.  By gaining support from 710 members, Mr. Tsang made it impossible for any challenger to join the election race, since any candidate is required to collect a minimum of 100 nomination papers. His main opponent, Democratic Party chairman Lee Wing-tat, gathered only 51 nominations. As a result, Mr. Tsang will be declared the uncontested winner, and a planned July election will be cancelled.  Tsang had made it clear that he wanted a swift knockout victory to prevent any formal challenges. He portrayed it as a kind of euthanasia to ease the suffering of the two politicians who tried to challenge him.  "It's better to relieve my rival of the pain quickly," he reportedly told a meeting of election-committee members last week.

The process of selecting Mr. Tsang was far from democratic. The 796 people who choose the chief executive are an elite group of representatives of professions and other sectors, weighted heavily in favour of pro-Beijing groups. They have little connection to the broad mass of Hong Kong's population.  Mr. Tsang refused to attend any public debates with his opponents. Democracy groups said the selection process was a sham.

And now for some fond (and not widely known) memories:

• How many people were officially entered as election candidates?  
   
  Everyone knows that there are three people -- Donald Tsang, Lee Wing-tat (chairman of the Democratic Party) and Chim Pui-chung (independent Legislative Councilor).  The correct answer is SIX, including Donald Tsang.  Furthermore, Lee Wing-tat and Chim Pui-chung were not even among the six, as they only declared their intent to the press and waited until the last moment to see if they could get the 100 nomination papers.
   
  Who are the other five?  The press has decided that the people of Hong Kong don't need to know.  Well, except for one of them who made himself known.  Since the man did not see daylight in the English-language press, I am going to recount several of his more famous appearances.
   
  (Oriental Daily via Yahoo! News)  On June 8, there was a forum on behalf of senior citizens.  Donald Tsang, Lee Wing-tat and Chim Pui-chung were invited.  Lee and Chim appeared, but Tsang did not show.  Unemployed citizen Chan Yuet-tung presented himself to the organizers as an "already registered candidate" to participate.  Lee and Chim really had nothing new to say, so the forum was dominated by Chan who proposed: increasing the "monthly candy money" to senior citizens to HK$1,000 per month; capping government officials' salaries at HK$50,000 per month; demolishing all prisons in order to build hospitals for senior citizens; paying families to adopt senior citizens into their homes; and so on.  Chan was laughed at by the audience, and the organizers were sorry that they invited him on stage.
   
  (Ming Pao via Yahoo News!)  On June 11, Chan Yuet-tung applied for a judicial review of the legality of the Election Committee, which is supposed to have 800 members according to the Basic Law.  There are only 796 members right now, and the status of about 30 of them may be subject to challenge because they are no longer in their original constituency.  However, on this day, he was unable to come up with the HK$1,045 filing fee, so he intends to file an application of fee waiver next week.
   
  (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News)  On June 15, Chan Yuet-tung appeared at the campaign office of Donald Tsang.  Previously, Chan had filed a lawsuit against then-Chief Secretary Donald Tsang for exceeding his authority in seeking an interpretation from the Chinese National People's Congress Standing Committee on the length of term of the next Chief Executive.  The court had just decided that it would not hear Chan's case, and ordered Chan to pay court costs of HK$15,000.  On this day, Chan came to see Donald Tsang with a 'letter of surrender' that included a request for Tsang to pick up his court fees.
   
  Donald Tsang had made it know that he would not attend forums until after the nomination process has ended, precisely to avoid dealing with people like Chan Yuet-tung and their side-shows.
   
• How many nomination votes was Lee Wing-tat aiming for?
   
  Everyone knows that he needs 100 votes to be nominated.  But according to the street rumors, the magical number for Lee Wing-tat was only 66 votes.
   
  Here is how the strategy went.  As noted before, there are only 796 current members on the Election Committee, of which about 30 are subject to challenge.  If Lee Wing-tat reaches 66 or more, he will file a judicial review to argue that he MAY be able to reach 100 if only there were 34 more valid voters, all of which MAY vote for him.  The result of a judicial review may result in the cancellation of the scheduled Chief Executive election and lead to other constitutional crises.
   
  The major component in the Lee's quest to get to 66 or more is the Social Welfare sector with 40 electors.  This is regarded as a traditional stronghold for the Democratic Party.  If Lee could secure all or most of those votes, he would be very close to the 100 mark and the judicial review will be more likely to succeed.
   
  At a meeting of those 40 electors, a member of the Democratic Party proposed that the electors shall vote as a bloc on the basis of a winner-take-all survey of its members.  Immediately, the electors had divided opinions.  Some of them refused to participate in this scheme; ultimately, 14 swore that they would abide by the survey results, and 6 said they would use the survey results as advice.  Hong Kong University was asked to conduct a random sample of social welfare workers.  The survey gave Donald Tsang 59% of the votes, 19% to Lee Wing-tat and the rest were no-preferences.  The upshot was that all but one of the votes went to Donald Tsang.
   
  In the print edition of the June 18 edition of Sing Tao, Lee Wing-tat made a remarkable comment.  Lee said that he had opposed the use of a survey to determine public preference.  He said, "The whole wide world knows that you are supposed to nominate people on the basis of political positions and policy platforms.  A public opinion poll is going to mean that I will lose.  For example, I would never ask Albert Ho to conduct a public opinion survey in his New Territories West district before deciding whether or not to support me."  That is right, people, the representative that you elected should not care what you think ...

There is quite a bit of post-mortem analyses.  Was the system rigged to guarantee the outcome?  How many ways was it rigged?  What about those late-night phone calls from mainland Chinese people to pressure the electors?  Was it the Chinese navy flotillas that show up in Hong Kong harbor?  And so on and so forth.  What is missing is a little bit of introspection and soul-searching about what happened, the same thing that Chinese President Hu Jintao told former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa.

Question: Was Donald Tsang the wrong person? ('wrong' in the sense of being against the will of the people)

In the most recent public opinion poll by HKU POP, 1,029, persons were surveyed between June 6 and 8, 2005.  The support rates were 78% for Donald Tsang, 3% for Lee Wing-tat and <1% for Chim Pui-chung.  Previously, HKU POP surveyed 1,015 persons between June 1 and 3, 2005.  In that survey, respondents were asked to assign ratings (a number between 0 and 100) to each of the three candidates, and the results were broken down by self-defined political inclination.  In Hong Kong's school system, a rating less than 50 is regarded as failure and written out in red ink.

	Donald Tsang	Lee Wing-tat	Chim Pui-chung
TOTAL	77.6	39.0	29.6
Pro-democracy Pro-China Moderate No preference	73.8 84.3 78.0 79.8	47.0 26.3 36.5 36.3	30.0 26.5 29.0 30.4

These support numbers are fantastic.  Even people who defined themselves as 'pro-demcracy' considered Lee Wing-tat to be failing.  So it is sour grapes at this point if you don't like the outcome.  The will of the people was satisfied, even if you didn't like the process.  And once you accept this point, you can go back and re-read the Globe and Mail article on top and recognize it for how unfair and bitter it was.

Question:  From a previous post Small Circle Electoral Politics:

In the September 2004 election for the Legislative Council, the pan-democratic camp won about 60% of the popular vote and this would indicate broad support.  So how is that the Democratic Party for the Chief Executive position has a support of 1% at this time?  Is Lee Wing-tat, the chairman of the Democratic Party, a weak candidate?  In the poll cited in the post Hong Kong By The Numbers, the support levels for the next Chief Executive were (and this is an open-ended poll in which respondents can name anyone that they want):

• 55.7%: Donald Tsang, the interim Chief Executive; not a declared candidate as yet but is presumed to become so
• 28.5%: Anson Chan, the former Chief Secretary; not a declared candidate and has shown no interest so far
•   2.1%: Emily Lau, legislative councilor, member of Frontier and not a declared candidate
•   1.2%: Lee Wing-tat, chairman of the Democratic Party and a declared candidate

This is not just about Lee Wing-tat, because any other pan-democratic camp member would have received a low number as well.  This is the much larger problem for the future of the pan-democratic camp.

There are any number of similar polls.  Where is the introspection and soul-searching?  Why does the public give you a majority in the Legislative Council election but then also think that you are totally unqualified to run the government?

I argue that the priorities of the Democracy project are set in the wrong order.  Lee Wing-tat's election platform differs most significantly from Donald Tsang's in advocating direct elections in 07/08.  Donald Tsang sneers at that because Lee has no roadmap to make that happen, so this is just a lie to inflame the population.  Lee would be more convincing if there were a democrat who is qualified to become the next Chief Executive in 2007.  There is no one remotely close at this time.  The big question: WHY?  If such a democratic candidate exists, then the drive for direct elections in 2007 would be more compelling as a popular and qualified candidate would be denied otherwise.  But there is nobody now.  And how can that be changed?  Nobody wants to ask such questions because it will shake up the foundations of the democratic establishments since the parties would be forced to re-invent themselves.