Following the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC)’s earlier “drastic” reform of Hong Kong’s electoral system, the Hong Kong government plans to make another “move” by amending the law to restrict “blank votes” in an attempt to deprive people of the right to express their discontent.
Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Eva Cheng and Hong Kong Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Tsang Kwok-wai attended a radio program on the 3rd of this month to talk about election issues, said that the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China to amend the Basic Law Annex mentioned that Hong Kong “should take measures to regulate the manipulation and disruption of elections in accordance with the law”, the government is considering the existing local election laws The government is considering whether the existing local election laws are sufficient to deal with “white-voting” behavior, and will make appropriate adjustments if necessary. The government will study whether the current regulation is sufficient.
The news immediately sparked a public debate.
An earlier report in Ming Pao quoted Hong Kong Basic Law Committee member Chen Hongyi as explaining that voters are free to not go to the polls or to cast blank votes, and that there is no need to regulate them by law. Meanwhile, Cai Ziqiang, a senior lecturer at CUHK’s Department of Political Science and Administration, stressed that he had never heard of a place where blank votes are not allowed, and he failed to see how advocating blank votes would harm national security. A regime that can’t even afford a white vote is extremely weak, Tsai said.
Hong Kong legislator Tse Wai-chun said in an interview with Radio Television Hong Kong on Monday that a blank vote would only affect the turnout, not the outcome of the election, and that the government does not need to regulate blank votes at this stage. However, he warned that anyone who advocates inciting people to cast a blank vote may violate the Hong Kong National Security Law.
The same program was attended by the Democratic Party Chairman Luo Jianxi, who asked why the practice of “blank votes” would become a problem now when there had been no problem in the past, questioning whether all people should vote for the government is the only possible choice.
Professor Chan Man-man, Chair of Public Law at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law, told Commercial Radio Hong Kong that after the Chinese Communist Party’s National People’s Congress “improved” the electoral system, the authorities may worry that the turnout rate will be record low or the invalid vote rate record high, and hope to regulate the relevant behavior, but if the government will call on voters to cast blank votes as an illegal act, it will be easy to appear a gray area, such as Voters who choose all candidates to create spoiled ballots can also invalidate them.
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