HONG KONG: Little Excitement in First Direct Polls under China

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Cheung Chui-Yung

HONG KONG, May 21 1998 (IPS) - For an election long pictured as a test of Hong Kong’s autonomy under Chinese rule, this weekend’s vote for a new local legislature is stirring little excitement here.

On May 24, some 2.8 million registered voters will choose members of a new legislative council in the first direct polls since the handover of what is now the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The new legislature will take the place of a China-appointed body that Beijing had named soon after the July 1997 handover and ended work in April. That appointive body had cut short the terms of local legislators elected in 1995, under British rule.

When it was announced soon after the handover, the May election had been characterised as a test of China’s sincerity to uphold the ‘one country, two systems’ formula in Hong Kong.

But nearly a year after the change of sovereignty, independent surveys and forecasts by analysts say the voter turnout will be anything but enthusiastic. All signs point to a low turnout, which some say may even be lower than 35.8 percent turnout in the 1995 election.

An April 2 vote for members of an 800-member electoral college which will choose some of the new legislators also turned up turnout figures of just 23 percent.

A complicated voting system, perceptions that opposition figures would have a less than real voice in the legislature and economic worries are combining to set the stage for a low-turnout election this weekend.

Many voters are unhappy with an electoral arrangement in which a disparity could exist between the votes a party attracts and the number of seats it will occupy.

Even if pro-democracy candidates win most of the 20 legislative seats up for direct election, they would still make up the minority in the 60-member body.

This is because the 40 other seats are not to be chosen at large — 30 will be selected by professional groups in “functional constituencies” and 10 by the 800-member electoral college led by business associations. These 40 seats are expected to be filled by largely pro-Beijing candidates.

Even pro-Beijing officials do not deny that the present set-up could minimise the presence of the pro-democratic camp, especially the Democratic Party, in the new legislature.

The chairman of Democratic Party, Martin Lee Chu-ming, says his group can probably secure 10 seats out of the total 20 directly elected seats. Together with other Democrats, the democratic bloc could get around 14 seats this time in comparison with the 17 they secured in the 1995 polls.

“Can we say that the new legislative council is credible and representative of the people?” Joe Chan, an administrator of a public organisation, asked.

Leung Kuen, a senior citizen, says she found it extremely difficult to understand the new system of proportional representation. “I will choose to abstain on the election day because the system is too confusing,” she added.

Leung is not an isolated case. The latest surveys showed that almost 80 percent of the voters did not fully understand the current electoral arrangements.

Michael DeGolyer, director of the Hong Kong Transition Project, says the new system is “exclusionary” and was designed to form a legislature in the hands of a selected few.

But even this may not stop a comeback by pro-democracy figures, whose expected domination of the directly elected seats would in itself send a political message. Previous poll results that show many Hong Kong people associate the Democratic Party in particular as the group that stands up for human rights.

“When the new Legco (legislative council) opens for business, it will not be the tame, diluted creature the Hong Kong government aimed to create,” he said in a written commentary.

Analysts are looking out to see how many eligible voters stay away from the polls or cast a blank ballot in protest against the electoral system, and want the government to release figures on these after election day.

A low turnout or a high proportion of blank ‘protest’ votes would almost certainly be an embarrassment for the SAR government, and boost arguments for the government to change the system in the next direct election in the year 2000.

The Chinese government has said it would not be sending any official to monitor the SAR election to live up to the spirit of ‘one country, two systems’ set-up.

That, however, may be the least urgent of the Hong Kong government’s concerns. For it, the key question is what it can do to improve local residents’ feeling of involvement under the concept of ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong’.

Another factor in the expected low turnout is a feeling by many that they are unlikely to find answers to Hong Kong’s economic woes in the new legislature. Voters are preoccupied with things such as the economy, property prices, the stock market and rising unemployment.

Figures released last week show that unemployment in Hong Kong has reached a peak of 3.9 percent, the highest in more than a decade.

Unemployment rose to 3.9 percent for the three-month period ending April, up from 3.5 percent in the previous period, due largely to the dampening effects of Asia’s financial crisis.

“Hong Kong is clearly feeling the strains of the regional economic crisis,” the Asian Development Bank said in its ‘Asian Development Outlook’ released last month. “Unemployment is bound to increase as the economy slows down.”

Unemployment in Hong Kong hit a peak of more than 4 percent in the mid-eighties and some economic analysts see it hitting 4.3 percent by yearend.

Sectors like construction, tourism and consumer and service oriented businesses have been hard hit in the fallout from Asia’s crisis. Services account for some 85 percent of GDP.

Hong Kong’s economy is slowing down, with GDP growth projected by independent analysts at about 3 percent for 1998. However, the government still projects a growth figure of 3.5 percent growth.