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Booing, a walkout, then Hong Kong vetoes China-backed electoral reform proposal
Sydney Morning Herald - June 19, 2015
Celebrations by pro-democracy crowds, many of which supported huge street protests across the territory last year, were muted.
"There is a lot of tension in Hong Kong arising from this political reform controversy and our society has never been so divided," Democratic Party lawmaker Albert Ho told reporters.
Perhaps typifying a persistent strain of public sentiment even more so than the sporadic protests in the lead-up to the vote, Hong Kong soccer fans at a home World Cup qualifier vociferously booed the Chinese national anthem their sporting teams play under.
The result of the vote on Thursday itself was of little surprise: the bloc of pro-democracy politicians in the Legislative Council had enough votes to torpedo the bill and had clearly foreshadowed their intention to do so.
Beijing stated before the vote it was unwilling to negotiate a compromise, pushing Hong Kong's political future into doubt, while public opinion remains deeply divided.
Polls had indicated public opinion was almost evenly split between those who wanted legislators to vote against the plan, and those who believed that it was better to accept Beijing's plan, even if flawed.
China's central government had framed its package as momentous political reform, offering the former British colony its first-ever direct election. But opponents to the proposal derided it as "fake democracy", given the only candidates allowed to stand would be those vetted by a nomination committee stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists and business elites.
"Let us show the world that we are not fools," pan-democrat legislator Claudia Mo urged her colleagues in the televised debate over the measure. "If you want to be true to the words democracy... all Hong Kongers, we have no option but to vote against it."
The bill needed the support of at least two-thirds of Hong Kong's 70-strong Legco to pass.
In bizarre scenes, pro-establishment lawmakers who supported the measure staged a mass walkout in a failed attempt to stall the ballot, meaning the expected narrow defeat of the bill became a blow-out of 28 votes against and 8 in favour.
China's foreign ministry expressed regret over the rejection of the plans, saying it remained the best hope for Hong Kong's continued prosperity.
"That the chief executive of the Special Administrative Region's government should not be elected as such in 2017 is a result we are unwilling to see," spokesman Lu Kang said.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying argued the Beijing-backed proposal would have been a marked improvement over the current system and said the lawmakers who voted no effectively denied "five million eligible voters the right to elect the chief executive."
The vote means the current system – where a 1200-person nominating committee of Hong Kong's political and business elite selects the city chief executive – will likely remain in place for the next election in 2017.
While tens of thousands of protesters are expected to join an annual pro-democracy march on July 1, a repeat of the Occupy protests which captured global attention and paralysed key parts of the city for 79 days is seen as unlikely given a growing divide among pro-democracy groups and the splintering of the Federation of Students.
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