From HKFP – an op-ed on the failure of even ‘moderate patriots’ to get nominated as candidates for the District Council elections…
…it appears that 75 per cent of the candidates in the geographical race already sit on the committees that decide who stands in the elections. A cautious approach, you might think. One committee member said that he or she did not dare to nominate potential candidates “without Beijing’s blessing.” Beijing’s Liaison Office likely played a key role in coordinating the nominations to ensure the outcome desired by the central authorities.
…How to explain [moderates’ inability to get nominated]? Lau [Siu-kai] implies that although [Ronny] Tong and [Michael] Tien and other leaders may meet the standard of being patriots, the candidates themselves are unknown to the authorities. There would be a high risk for the nominators if they turned out not to measure up, he writes.
In my district, we have Angel Pang (mentioned yesterday), who wants to widen Caine Road to three lanes for cars (easy – just knock down all the stupid buildings on either side of the street), and Karl Fung for Council, who pushes ‘Community Harmony’ and ‘Community: You, me and Pets’. (There are three others, who may or may not add to the diversity of ideas.)
If you enjoyed clicking on last week’s link to the HK Democracy Council only to get a ‘This site can’t be reached’ message, you’ll enjoy Samuel Bickett’s latest piece here. (Offer applies within Hong Kong only. A workaround.)
The article asks why the proposed US Hong Kong Sanctions Act against officials, judges and prosecutors has hit such a raw nerve among local authorities, and suggests that overseas perceptions about declining judicial independence are having a real economic cost. On the idea from Regina Ip, Lau Siu-kai and Tam Yiu-chung that trials might be transferred to the Mainland…
It is … likely that these three figures were acting on their own in a dance we’ve seen more and more in Hong Kong’s ranks: performative efforts to impress Beijing by out-doing each other in the level of shock and attention they can bring to the cause.
Even if I’m wrong here and the threat did originate with Beijing or the Hong Kong government, actually carrying it out would make little sense. The crux of the accusation that forms the basis for the Hong Kong Sanctions Act is that the judiciary is no longer independent and political defendants cannot get a fair trial. If Beijing responded to the Act by interfering with the Hong Kong judicial process and transferring prisoners to Mainland China, they would simply confirm to the world that the U.S. government was right. It doesn’t fit Beijing’s narrative, and would cause more problems for them while solving none.
The government seems to deny it will happen.
“…How to explain [moderates’ inability to get nominated]? Lau [Siu-kai] implies that although [Ronny] Tong and [Michael] Tien and other leaders may meet the standard of being patriots, the candidates themselves are unknown to the authorities. There would be a high risk for the nominators if they turned out not to measure up, he writes.”
Farking hell…I’ve never actually lived in HK and I very well know who these two are.
The lack of choice is shockingly depressing, ;-). Just imagine how amazing it would be to live in the USA and get to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, on in the UK and have the option of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer? If I could vote to abolish ‘democracy’, perhaps in return for a 50 quid/year tax rebate, I most certainly would. It is useless.
Electioneering appears to be selective, my hood is thankfully spared the rows of zombies desperately trying to catch the attention of the deliberately averted eyes of pedestrians that I encounter when venturing into less civilized zones. Kennedy Town and North Point, for example, are best avoided for a few weeks.
The agendas of the ‘candidates’ are clearly an amalgam of historical issues, the throw enough mud and some will stick formula. Like the retard Hemlock mentioned who wants to abolish dedicated bus lanes, the annointed chair-in-waiting for YTM supports reviving the plan to build a shopping mall under Kowloon Park. A vote winner in a district with hundreds of empty shops, and lets not go into the impact a further decrease in recreational space would have on family planning.
@Chinese Netizen
Lau isn’t referring to Tien and Tong as candidates for district council seats but rather candidates who stand as members of their respective parties.
@reactor. While tired of your whataboutery, you have a point about the un-inspiring candidates mentioned. But democracy is much more than that: layers of transparency, free speech, right to street protest and Woodward and Bernstein. In your authoritarian world Woodward would have fallen out of a window in an underground car park.
What a giveaway! In just his last two sentences, Reactor #4 reveals himself as stupid, ignorant, corrupt and cheap.
Karl Hungus is running for DC? He gets my vote. He is expert!
https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-big-lebowski/image/57384_00031
Can we ever be absolutely certain that Reactor #4 isn’t Nury Vittachi?
UK PM Rishi Sunak has just appointed former UK PM David Cameron to be the UK’s Foreign Secretary. The position is one UK Parliament’s highest offices of state. The problem is, though, that Cameron is unelected; he now needs to be fast-tracked into the House of Lords so he can take up the position. For those who believe in the democratic system/process (I very definitely don’t), your assignment today is to write a 500-word statement justifying Sunak’s actions. You may begin writing NOW.
@sarcophagus#4
Obviously, you do not understand “democracy” and “the West”
“Just imagine how amazing it would be to live in the USA and get to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, on in the UK and have the option of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer?”
In US and U.K. candidates are nominated by the voters so at least it is the voters who nominated these uninspiring candidates and ballot access is relatively open as required by ICCPR article 25 which gives all citizens the right to vote AND stand for election without unreasonable restriction. The same can not be said about the new HK “patriots only” elections where unelected nominators nominate the candidates instead of the voters AND they mostly nominate themselves and make themselves impossible to contact by any independent aspirants making a total mockery of Basic Law article 26 which states all permanent residents have the right to vote AND the right to stand for election. ICCPR is also binding to Basic Law so article 25 applies to which states that any restrictions by law must not be unreasonable. Pre 2020 nomination procedures were reasonable restrictions by law as the nomination threshold was not too high and most importantly gave nomination power to the voters themselves. The same can’t be said about post 2020 patriots only elections which are a total farce even at the lowest municipal level. It’s totally unconstitutional but dictatorships don’t care as long as it looks like elections are happening never mind the slight of hand where real elections were swapped with fake unconstitutional ones.
“But democracy is much more than that: layers of transparency, free speech, right to street protest”
And we used to have all of this in HK, and HK was better for it.
Dear Reactor #4
You appear to be in the wrong place.
Have you not noticed that commenters here are all pretty bright? The replies to your petty attacks on democracy, say, often kindly point out where you are going wrong. But you don’t succeed in stirring up the kind of mudslinging that perhaps entertains you elsewhere.
Isn’t it all rather a waste of your time, as well as ours?
I had it in mind to have a bloody good go at Chiropractor #4 on account of his general odiousness, predictable bullshit, and woeful grammar.
I also thought that I might pull up the saintly Mark Bradley on the various and obviously inadvertent inaccuracies in his well-intentioned and entirely justified counterblast.
But sitting where I am in a yacht club bar, overlooking a placid Asian sea, I thought, “Fuck it! I can’t be arsed”.
Hope this helps.
Even though I don’t believe in democracy, I’ll be going out of my way to cast my ballot in in the forthcoming District Council elections. As a proud, well-satisfied, long-term resident of the HKSAR, it’s my civic duty to endorse the system that I choose to live in.
@ Mark Bradley
Yes…and it includes all sorts of local votes, ballot measures and initiatives on tax changes, criminal justice reform, education funding, and so on that have meaningful effects on daily life.
@Reader
I read a number of comments like these:
Reactor #4 reveals himself as stupid, ignorant, corrupt and cheap.
Can we ever be absolutely certain that Reactor #4 isn’t Nury Vittachi?
@sarcophagus#4
And then you: Rector “ you don’t succeed in stirring up the kind of mudslinging that perhaps entertains you elsewhere.”
And you “Have you not noticed that commenters here are all pretty bright?”
@Rocinante
“Have you not noticed that [the] commenters here are all pretty bright?”
Based on Einstein’s musing, pretty stupid seems like a more apt description. Present-day HK is what it is (and not too bad at that), so instead of you lot wasting sizeable amounts of mental energy wishing is was something rather different, you’d be better off embracing it. It’s not going away and neither am I.
Not so much his comments, which are typical, predictable, and quite lame. Too easy to simply not feed the trolls, as they used to say. What really give me a laugh is an elderly edge lord (on such a niche blog). This is fantastic, proving to me Poe’s Law is alive and well – even in an illiberal place like HK.
@Red Dragon
“I also thought that I might pull up the saintly Mark Bradley on the various and obviously inadvertent inaccuracies in his well-intentioned and entirely justified counterblast.”
I can’t help but be curious where you think I was inaccurate as now I am wondering myself what it could be?
Perhaps my pre-2020 nomination procedures opinion was too rose coloured? After all only the District Council and *half* the Legco seats had candidates that were nominated and elected in a mostly ICCPR compliant manner and even then there were issues like DQs though that was also a fairly recent CY era degeneration of HK’s democracy and pluralistic society. And there were irregularities such as vote planting too.
But HK still seemed so open and pluralistic back then. I sure miss it.