2015-03-13
Pedestrians and pro-democracy activists walk past tents at a protest site in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district, Nov. 24, 2014. AFP
Political tensions in Hong Kong over controversial political reforms appeared to harden further this week, suggesting that there will be scant room for debate or criticism of the electoral arrangements laid down by Beijing.
Hong Kong’s justice minister on Friday appeared to rule out a public referendum on a controversial electoral reform package to be unveiled next month ahead of a debate in the city’s legislature, saying there were no provisions for such a popular vote in its laws.
“There is no legal basis for us to have a referendum. A referendum has no place in Hong Kong,” justice secretary Rimsky Yuen told reporters.
Yuen’s comments came after the chief pollster at the University of Hong Kong, Robert Chung, made the suggestion as a way to resolve the current political deadlock over the framework for the 2017 election for the city’s chief executive.
Pan-democratic members, who hold 27 out of 60 seats in the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo) have vowed to veto the plan, which was laid down in an Aug. 31 ruling by China’s parliament that sparked more than two months of pro-democracy protests and the occupation of major highways.
Chung had said the referendum could persuade pan-democrats not to block the reforms, if the majority of Hong Kong people opposed their doing so.
The NPC ruled that while all five million of Hong Kong’s voters will be allowed to cast a ballot in the 2017 race for chief executive, they will only be able to choose between two or three candidates pre-selected by Beijing.
Occupy Central protesters and pan-democratic politicians, who won 54 percent of the popular vote in the last legislative elections, have dismissed the proposed reform package as “fake universal suffrage.”
Pan-democratic Civic Party leader Alan Leong said on Friday that his party has yet to debate Chung’s idea, but pointed to an unofficial referendum last June in which some 700,000 people said any electoral arrangements that didn’t meet international standards—including the right to be nominated for elections—should be ruled out.
‘Inappropriate’ term
Beijing and Hong Kong officials have repeatedly said that neither the calls for public nominations nor the June referendum have any basis in the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
Rita Fan, a veteran pro-establishment politician and Hong Kong delegate to the NPC, said the word “referendum” should be avoided, as it is considered sensitive in Beijing.
“This word you use, referendum, is going to get a sensitive reaction,” Fan told reporters on the sidelines of the NPC on Friday.
“The central government hasn’t just said once; it’s said many times that Hong Kong isn’t a sovereign territory, it’s just a district [of China],” Fan said.
“The word ‘referendum’ is inappropriate.”
