Hong Kong‘s Legislative Council elections could be pushed back another year as the Chinese Communist Party is mulling major moves on the city’s electoral system. Observers say the reform of Hong Kong’s electoral system will completely extinguish expectations for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, which will be a major blow to the city’s democracy movement.
The South China Morning Post and other Hong Kong media reported Friday (March 5) that the second postponement of the Hong Kong Legislative Council election should be in line with Beijing‘s basic idea of promoting the principle of patriots ruling Hong Kong in the Hong Kong civil service. Last September, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor used the Epidemic as a reason to postpone the Hong Kong Legislative Council election for a year.
China’s official media has recently been heavily promoting the issue of patriots ruling Hong Kong, creating public opinion for the National People’s Congress to enact a new election law for Hong Kong.
The annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, known as a “rubber stamp,” begins Friday and lasts about a week. Reform measures for Hong Kong’s electoral system will be a major agenda item at the meeting.
Wang Chen, vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, said China will change the size, composition and structure of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Election Committee to give it the power to choose Hong Kong lawmakers.
Speaking at the opening of the NPC session, Wang Chen said the electoral system in Hong Kong, including the method of selecting the Chief Executive and the method of forming the Legislative Council, should be continuously improved to ensure that Hong Kong is ruled by “patriots”, which is conducive to safeguarding the interests of national security and development and maintaining the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.
He said, “The general idea is to restructure and empower the Election Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as the core of the overall system design, adjust and optimize the size, composition and method of selecting the Election Committee, and continue to elect the Chief Executive by the Election Committee.
It is generally believed that the Chinese Communist Party is making a major move against the Hong Kong electoral system in response to the ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019. If last year’s annual meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed the Hong Kong national security law, providing a legal weapon for a comprehensive crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp, this year’s NPC initiative to enact a reform of the electoral system aimed at patriots ruling Hong Kong will cause Hong Kong to completely depart from the core principle of the CCP’s long-held policy of Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.
Some official Chinese revelations suggest that there will be some changes to the structure of Hong Kong’s electoral system, such as an increase in the number of Legislative Council seats from the current 70 to 90, some of which will be selected by electoral commissioners who are predominantly pro-Beijing. Seats controlled by the pro-democracy camp may be eliminated altogether or reduced in number.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council currently has 70 members, half of whom are elected and half of whom are allocated through functional constituencies, or by industry.
Wang Chen said the 1,200-member Chief Executive Election Committee will be expanded to further improve the system of patriots ruling Hong Kong. He said the Election Committee will be involved in the nomination of candidates for the Hong Kong Legislative Council and will also be authorized to select a “significant portion” of legislators.
Wang Chen did not specify how large this “significant” is, but sources said it is 30 people, accounting for one-third of the total number of 90 members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council.
Wang Chen said the reform would involve changes to parts of Hong Kong’s Basic Law that would reinforce China’s “comprehensive jurisdiction” over the territory and would resolve deep-rooted problems once and for all.
In recent months, the Hong Kong authorities, with the support of Beijing, have launched an all-out crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp, which has seen many pro-democracy activists either jailed or in exile overseas, largely losing their collective power to fight as a political force. The reform measures proposed by the NPC this Time will completely exclude them from the legislative and executive branches.
Reuters quoted Hong Kong Democratic Party Chairman Law Kin-hei as saying, “People are losing confidence in the system, and it’s not a good sign if we don’t allow dissenting voices to emerge in order to have a more peaceful society.”
Beijing’s move would be a game-changer for Hong Kong’s elections, and would have a “broader and more radical impact” than the national security law, reports Han Yong Hong, Beijing correspondent for the Singapore Union-Tribune.
The Associated Press noted that this would be a major step backwards for Hong Kong’s democracy movement. The Hong Kong Basic Law states that Beijing is committed to the eventual implementation of universal suffrage in Hong Kong.
The political situation in Hong Kong would thus regress to the 1970s, contrary to Beijing’s commitment to the gradual development of democracy in Hong Kong, Cai Ziqiang, a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Friday.
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