They said it could not be done! The most nauseating moment on RTHK this morning should, by rights, have been the discussion with Priscilla ‘Rat Queen’ Leung, the clueless, talentless, graceless and most-things-less pro-Beijing legislator from Kowloon West. Yet she was left standing by Junius Ho, Priscilla’s newly elected colleague from NT West.
Rather than being devoid of noteworthy characteristics, Ho has them in abundance – ranging from odiousness to sliminess to creepiness to endorsement by the Liaison Office. After some variant of Beijing-linked lowlife saw off rival candidate Ken Chow through unspecified menaces, Ho narrowly won a seat with a lame 35,600 votes. The RTHK interview presented a good opportunity to be at least slightly modest for a moment. But instead he decided to gloat about land activist (and brave critic of Ho’s village mafia buddies) Eddie Chu, who won a resounding 84,100 votes. Smirking so much it was obvious even over the radio, Ho mocked that he would not have won his seat if the pan-dems had organized their supporters more effectively and not ‘wasted’ surplus votes on Chu. Priscilla Leung never seemed so charming and huggable.
The big question is: What will Beijing do now? The answer probably lies in the nastiness and arrogance displayed by Junius Ho upon getting far fewer votes than the pan-dems, and even then only with assistance from various gruesome quarters. He is the personification of the Communist Party’s United Front tactics: the exercise of control over Hong Kong through the co-option of grubby interest groups who leech off the rest of the economy and population. It is an extraordinarily inefficient and difficult method of gaining influence over a community – to buy support from unpopular parasitical groups, rather than simply win the approval of the masses through decent governance – but it seems this is the only way Communists know.
Willy Lam foresees malevolent, vindictive clampdown, including another attempt at Article 23 national security laws. This sounds about right. Ramping up the force and obnoxiousness and threats is, again, the only solution to opposition Communists can envisage. In Xinjiang, Chinese officials are trying to force Muslims to do tai chi in the parks every morning, to make them more normal and happy. Lam predicts similarly subtle demographic and economic absorption for Hong Kong, perhaps through more Mainland immigration and more eradication of economic diversity in favour of Mainland-oriented tourism/shopping/hellishness, to force the uppity and ungrateful city to become more dependent on the glorious motherland, thus servile and pitifully grateful and adoring.
Actually, we should reframe the question: What will Beijing do if/after the courts order new elections in which formerly screened-out pro-independence candidates can run? The answer is, presumably, ‘all of the above, plus extra mouth-frothing and extreme going-ballistic’.
An interesting departure-combo today: anti-Communist/abortion/women’s rights woman Phyllis Schlafly and counterculture publisher/journo/author Richard Neville. It would be fascinating to eavesdrop on them sharing memories of the late 60s-early 70s as they stand in line at the big reception desk in the sky.
Only someone like Junius Ho can spin a resounding vote of confidence in what someone believes, 80,000 people saying ‘this is what we want’, into a ‘waste’. What a bum.
Come off it. The most nauseating moment on RTHK 3 is when you turn on the radio. Over on Radio Four it s not much better with THE SAME one-minute flute or clarinet jingles played all day. They are mindlessly added to the computer play queue as the presenters are incapable of timing music correctly or extemporizing. A shoddy set of hospital radio shows all round. But so costly. Dame Jonathan Douglas is on a million and more a year with two or three months off. Rotten borough pre-1997 contracts all round. Cheers!
The former tour guide cum host of Backchat will recognize a fellow arrogant prat & sycophant who stumbled into luck with Junius Ho. Expect to hear the two of them in duet soon, they’ll mock the votes that feed their scummy useless souls.
@Gumshoes
Not quite true — both Dubious Ho and the Hong Kong LegCo electoral system can turn a resounding vote of confidence into a waste.
Odious, gloating and awful as Dubious is, you can’t fault his mathematics and precise understanding of how the Communist-nobbled PR system works in Hong Kong.
So — though I’m loathe to say it — Dubious is right: 80,000 votes for a single person list is indeed a waste of about 40,000 votes and therefore a LegCo seat.
The system is custom designed to penalise popular winners and reward losers who bully/bribe/buy their votes in relatively small, carefully-managed quantities like Dubious Ho, and the rest of the Communist candidates.
That’s why they had two full DAB lists, two full FTU lists, only one New Shoeshiners’ Party (Team Vagina) for the middle class, and sprinkling of dependent “independents” like Dubious in a 9 seat constituency. They are fully aware they currently only need about 40,000 votes per list and only about half the seats to maintain the status quo, and they only need to maintain the status quo for another 28 years and they’re home and dry.
I agree with Wo-lap and you that China is simply likely to turn the screw more. And it’s not going to be a few foreign(-contaminated) judges that will perceptibly slow down the juggernaut.
From their point of view Legco is just a parochial sideshow. Article 23 isn’t really needed: they still have plenty as many bludgeons at their disposal as ever.
For subtle, they can double the 1.1 million mainland immigrants since 1997; parade the navy and air force; change the nationality laws; ration the water; poison the food; open the border; or make HK part of the Spratlys.
For a guide look at what Stalin did.
@PD “For a guide look at what Stalin did.”
Indeed, expect mass deportations of Hong Kong’s uppity kulaks to the wastelands of Inner Mongolia.
@ LRE
For sure, you’re right. But I’m just saying in the cynical way the system is set up it’s true. And he’s taking that cynicism to heart as a mathematical waste instead of a voice of a large number of people. Plus, it’s hard to organize votes when you’re not bussing them with instructions to different locations.
I just have to plan where to retire for 2047. Taiwan’s looking nice. A large stretch of water and a real democratic system separate it from HK and Taipei’s becoming quite a civil place with nice natural scenery. Just needs better air connections. Or maybe Singapore. Like HK, not a democracy. But at least competently run in the large part. In the interim, I wish HK’s youth well for failing to buckle under to those up North. Nathan Law also had a policy agenda on most civic, public policy and quality of life issues that put most other candidates who only prioritise the futile fight for full democracy in HK or “what have I been told I must support today” or “how do I protect my snouts in the trough game” issues of the day. Hence my vote. That and it pisses off people like Junius and perplexes Regina.
“put to shame”.
@ Gumshoes
I get your point, and indeed the CPC introduced the system precisely because they alone can truly game it.
You really have to expect total self-serving cynicism from Communist Party candidates like Dubious, though — it’s pretty much a pre-requisite for the job.
Only the terminally daft or the oblivious to reality could be actually idealistic about the CPC, and the CPC are such a bunch of grizzled, old, calculating, self-serving cynics, that they probably wouldn’t trust either type of idealist at all — let alone with candidacy.
They prefer other self-serving cynical types — they’re far more predictable and much easier to control: the idealists have a terrible tendency to believe the party’s bullshit and want socialist and communist values enacted — both of which are (ironically) anathema to the CPC. Anyone espousing actual communist values and following through with it in the CPC has a very short life expectancy.
Junius got lucky but his side pulled out all the nasty tricks and still lost 3 seats. It is as though David punched Goliath in the face, and Goliath gloated about how David missed his other eye.
A female colleague was clearly not listening to the news carefully enough because she asked “So who is this fellow in the NT who got all the votes … Chu My Dick?”
@ Walter de Hav
Is that fellow related to Sook Mai Kwok?
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1283689-20160906.htm
Any other attempts to hide crapification in the election news cycle spotted by readers?
By publicly thanking the Liaison Office for helping his campaign, isn’t Dubious Ho admitting that they are flouting the Basic Law by taking sides in local elections?
However, Ho’s basic point is correct – it would be better for the pan-dems to put up at least two names on each list in order to benefit from surplus votes. Had they done so this time, LegCo would not be contaminated by Ho’s presence. A lesson for next time around.
And can someone with a better understanding of electoral mathematics please explain why the DAB tactic of putting up two lists may be better than one? It appears obvious to me that if say 100,000 votes are required to get elected, it would be better to have one list receiving 300,000 votes, electing three candidates, than two lists each receiving 150,000 votes, yielding only two winners.
@Old Newcomer
The two list trick (actually it’s 4+ with the FTU & NPP & Dubious Ho) works if you can
manage your voters so that they split roughly 50-50.
Our “PR” system penalises the popular winner because, whilst to be “assured” of election you need (for e.g.) 100,000*, the second seat onwards goes to the list with the next highest number of votes.
This means that you might really only need 50,000 to pick up the second to ninth seat. And if you get 130,000 votes for a 2-man list, you get one seat at the “assured” cost of 100,000 and 30,000 votes towards your second seat. But the DAB by splitting into two lists with 50,000 each can manage to get two seats with only 100,000 votes. As most of their “supporters” are old dears from homes, mainlanders bussed in, and Chinese SOE employees, all of whom are basically following instructions rather than really voting, the split of voters/list can be gamed much better than the democratic candidates.
Combined with their two FTU lists, the NPP and a couple of independents, this will also probably prevent the second name on the most popular list from having any chance of being elected. The DAB also fill their lists on the off-chance, and to look like they’re a legit popular party with funds, infrastructure and loads of unpaid supporters.
The net result is the overall “winner” with 130,000 has 1 seat and 80,000 wasted votes, whilst the middling DAB have two with 100,000 and just a few wasted votes.
In NT West it means that Eddie Chu Hoi Dik gets a “guaranteed” seat with 84,121, and from that he would only have had about 16,000 for the second name on his list. But the DAB get 2 seats with 2 lists at the cost of 58,673 and 50,190, the FTU 49,680 and Dubious Ho scrapes in with well under half as many votes as Eddie: 35,657.
So had Eddie been able to split his votes roughly 50-50, with 2 x 42,000 he’d have got 2 seats, and we’d have been down one Dubious Ho. As a single list, even with two names, he’d only have one seat and chump change, and Ho be pimpin’, yo!
Net result is that the Democrats get 55% of the vote and 45% of the seats; the Communists get 45% of the vote and 55% of the seats. Seems legit…
*The real threshold number is basically votes/seats — in NT West, that was 11.11% or ~68,000
Oops there’s only one FTU list! Probably not enough budget or buses or something —maybe in 2020, by which time they’ll have imported 2 million more mainlanders.
Watched so many debates, the endless podiums of communist mouth breathers wearing numbered badges all merged into one.
2 million = 200,000.
D’oh out by 1 order of magnitude!
LRE – Never mind the slips. Thank you for explaining.