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Lessons can be
learned from HK
By Paul Lin 林保華
Before Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections yesterday, all the political
parties made every effort to attract votes, promoting their own policies while
attacking opponents at various forums.
Meanwhile, another battle has taken place in the form of a social movement
against the “national education program” for primary and secondary school
students. When the Hong Kong government made no concessions even after 90,000
demonstrators took to the streets on July 29, three high school students from
Scholarism, a student group, started a hunger strike in front of the Central
Government Offices on Aug. 30. On Sept. 1, 40,000 demonstrators gathered there
to show their support, and some demonstrators joined the strike. On Sept. 3, the
first day of the school year, 10,000 students, parents, and citizens gathered
there once again. At this point, the organizers announced their intention to
escalate the demonstration, and launched a school-wide strike to boycott the new
program.
The two events are not completely unrelated. The pan-democracy camp supports the
anti-national education program campaign, while the pro-communist camp supports
the program to teach Hong Kongers to identify themselves with the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP). In addition, since Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying
(梁振英) came to power on July 1, he and his staff have been haunted by illegal
construction projects as well as corruption scandals. Leung did little to
address these problems, causing housing prices to soar to unprecedented levels
within a very short time. There was a rush on property buying and the government
rushed out 10 major measures to get things under control, but these were of
little use, and the public became increasingly testy. This situation originally
benefited the pro-democracy camp’s election campaign, but then bizarre internal
struggles started to emerge.
The power struggles mostly occurred between the Democratic Party and People
Power. The former is a relatively large party, and the latter is a relatively
small party that separated from the League of Social Democrats due to differing
attitudes toward the Democratic Party. Earlier, the Democratic Party and People
Power had opposing stances on the “five-constituency resignation” and “de facto
referendum” through the re-elections in these constituencies. Later, when the
Democratic Party compromised with Beijing on the political reform plan, the
People Power called it pro-communist and a fake democratic party. It even upheld
a slogan, “snipe at the Democratic Party,” during the District Council election
last year, although it was essentially criticizing all the pro-democracy parties
except for itself. As a result, it sacrificed its own electoral success. It was
prepared to see pro-communist candidates win rather than help the Democratic
Party’s candidates. This caused the Democratic Party to accuse People Power of
being the “B Team” for the pro-communist Democratic Alliance for the Betterment
and Progress of Hong Kong.
People Power has extreme views and does not attract moderate voters. It
therefore relies on support from the pan-democracy camp voter base. It launched
a large propaganda campaign against the Democrats, linking them to Chinese
communists.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, had adopted what were considered overly soft
policies, and these turned off young voters. The youth vote, then, became the
new target demographic for People Power’s campaign. The Democrats’ support
ratings were significantly affected, causing them to declare war against People
Power, accusing it of colluding with the CCP, receiving funds from pro-communist
activists and allowing candidates to do business in China.
People Power fired back, accusing the Democratic Party, League of Social
Democrats and Civic Party of receiving political donations from Next Media Group
chairman Jimmy Lai (黎智英).
The political reform plan provided for five “super district councilors,”
popularly elected legislators-at-large. Of course, only candidates from the
larger parties really had any chance of winning these seats and the new system
was regarded as being stacked against smaller parties. People Power then called
on voters to cast “blank ballots” in the election, because it would rather lose
the seats to pro-communist candidates than those from the Democratic Party,
League of Social Democrats and Civic Party.
On the face of it, the pan-democracy parties share common beliefs: they all
strive for universal suffrage and an end to single-party authoritarian rule,
condemn the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 and oppose Leung. Surely they can
find common ground despite their differences if they really disagree on minor
matters. Why must they destroy one another, forgetting the bigger picture? Is it
possible there is more to this than meets the eye?
We have seen similar things happen within the pan-green camp in Taiwan. Perhaps
they could learn something from what is happening in Hong Kong.
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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