2015-02-02
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Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying delivers his annual policy address to the legislative council in Hong Kong, Jan. 14, 2015.
AFP
In a fresh blow to the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement on Monday, Hong Kong’s leader warned that there are no guarantees that the city’s legislature will move towards full democracy by 2020.
Responding to demands from pan-democratic lawmakers, who hold 24 out of 60 seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo), chief executive Leung Chun-ying said his administration couldn’t promise that all lawmakers would be directly elected by 2020, one election away from next year’s scheduled poll.
“This isn’t something that the current administration can promise,” Leung told reporters, adding that Beijing’s wishes would have to be obeyed amid huge popular pressure for universal suffrage.
Currently, 30 of LegCo’s 60 seats are directly elected from geographical constituencies, while the remainder is chosen by businesses, professions, labor unions, civic and religious groups.
The abolition of these “functional constituencies” and the direct election of all 60 seats were a key demand of the largely student-led Occupy Central movement last year.
Leung’s comments came after thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday for the first time after the end of last year’s 79-day mass protest and occupation calling for universal suffrage in the former British colony.
While the turnout was much smaller than the crowds that surged onto the streets at the height of the “Umbrella Movement,” organizers said public feeling is still at loggerheads with Beijing’s plans for future elections in the city.
Maintaining the status quo
Leung said the only alternative to following Beijing’s election reform plan is to maintain the status quo, under which the chief executive is chosen by a 1,200-strong election committee handpicked by Beijing, and under which only half of Hong Kong’s lawmakers are directly elected.
“That is one of only two options open to us—to make no headway at all,” Leung said.
He said elections in 2017 to choose the next chief executive would be implemented according to the Aug. 31 framework laid out by the National People’s Congress (NPC), which would permit only candidates vetted by a committee beholden to Beijing to run for the territory’s top executive post.
Occupy Central campaigners, many of whom are students, have dismissed the plan as “fake universal suffrage,” because pan-democratic candidates are unlikely to be selected.
Pan-democratic lawmakers have threatened to veto the government’s electoral reform bill in LegCo in a bid to win further concessions on universal suffrage.
Leung’s second-in-command Carrie Lam said there would be no horse-trading with lawmakers over the reform package.
“If we miss this opportunity, then it will actually be a lose-lose situation, because we will have lost the chance to elect a chief executive through universal suffrage,” Lam said.
