Failure to reform Hong Kong's political system will hurt its global standing
Anson Chan calls on the SAR and central governments to consider carefully the potential fallout
On top of his knee-jerk dismissal of a proposal to put the government's final constitutional reform package to the test of public opinion, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung has added insult to injury by characterising pan-democrat legislators' vow to veto the government's political reform proposals as a "negative political gesture". This is rich coming from a member of the Task Force on Constitutional Development that has consistently poured cold water - either directly or via various pro-establishment mouthpieces - on every suggestion put forward to try and resolve the current political stalemate.
In company with other pro-democracy advocates, my Hong Kong 2020 think tank has gone the extra mile. We have participated in the government's consultation process with diligence and sincerity, despite the fact that it has been shamefully manipulated at every stage. We have requested meetings with the task force's members, to explain our ideas in detail; our requests have been turned down or quietly ignored.
Now, instead of responding positively to constructive proposals emerging from the consultation process, the government seems bent on bullying Hong Kong people into acceptance of a package that not even pro-Beijing diehards dare claim meets public expectations.
The aspirations of Hong Kong people for a credible system of electing the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017 have suffered death by a thousand cuts.
We were promised that the second stage consultation would offer potential for reforms to the composition and method of election of the future nominating committee. Instead, the tone and content of the consultation document made clear that the government has neither the will nor the imagination to respond to basic demands to abolish corporate (company) voting in the nominating committee subsectors and broaden its overall franchise. Without such changes, the nominating committee can neither claim to be "broadly representative" of the community, nor accountable to it.
The proposals we have unveiled for election of the chief executive in 2017 are designed to ensure that, while conforming to the requirements of the August 31 decision by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the nominating committee fulfills its responsibility to offer the electorate genuine choice and nominate candidates who can obtain sufficient votes to have political legitimacy.