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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:17 pm 
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So here's what's going on in my part of the world. It's time for our fifth fake Chief Executive Election. For those unfamiliar with the subject, every five years, Hong Kong holds an "election" for our Chief Executive, who is basically a glorified mayor. The "election" has campaigns, press events, and televised debates, but only 1200 people, themselves selected through a byzantine process designed to favour pro-establishment figures, are allowed to vote. The rest of the city's 7 million people are relegated to a spectator role. This is all part of an elaborate dance designed to allow Beijing to appoint its favoured candidate while maintaining a thin veneer of democracy and non-interference. But now, 15 years after the British returned us to China, the act is up.

The first "election", in 1997, was a carefully orchestrated event in which the designated winner, a shipping tycoon by the name of Tung Chee Hwa, ran a polite contest against two designated losers, just for show.

The second "election", in 2002, saw Tung running for re-election against...nobody. Tung was by then quite unpopular, and I guess Beijing couldn't find another patsy to run against him and lose.

The third "election", in 2005, was hastily thrown together after Tung quit (or some say got fired) midway through his disastrous second term. His designated replacement was Donald Tsang, a trusted civil servant, who got to run against himself.

The fourth "election", in 2007, was where it noticeably started coming apart. Tsang was meant to run for "re-election" alone, but this time a pro-democracy lawyer managed to elbow his way to a nomination in order to launch a quixotic protest campaign against him.

The fifth "election", happening right now, has gone completely wahoonie shaped. Beijing, probably not wanting to be embarrassed by the democrats again, made sure to nominate two acceptable "candidates" to run against each other. Exhibit A: Henry Tang, the longtime financial secretary; imagine Mitt Romney but way more stupid. He's in the pocket of Hong Kong's richest tycoons. Exhibit B: Leung Chun Ying, cabinet member, creepster, suspected variously of being a card-carrying Chinese Communist Party member, an economic populist, and an anti-democracy hardliner. A democrat did manage to shoehorn his way in again, but nobody cared, because a curious thing happened. The supposedly genteel "contest" between Tang and Leung suddenly turned nasty.

What's going on is that the fragile alliance between Hong Kong's plutocrats and its populist hardline patriots is finally cracking up. When the British gave us back to China, Beijing thought that a sensible ruling strategy would be to buy off the tycoons - you support us, and we let you run the city for fun and profit. The patriots didn't like it (being genuine ideological communists), but they had to put up and shut up because the boss said so. But over the last 15 years, the public has been getting increasingly fed up with trickle-down economics, and Beijing may be starting to have second thoughts. As the "election" season opened, we were treated to the bizarre sight of a Chinese official declaring that the next leader of Hong Kong ought to have the public's support, signalling that Beijing would tell the committee to vote for the more popular man. And so was launched a real political bitch fight, with each candidate behaving as if public opinion really mattered.

And so there was mudslinging. There was muckraking. There were extra-marital scandals, conflicts of interest, whiffs of minor venality, and of all things they could dredge up against somebody, building code violations. We think that Tang was initially slated to win, but he's made such a fool of himself that he is now a political liability to Beijing. This has given the patriots a chance to go on the offensive against the tycoons, and the tycoons, horrified at the prospect of an actual Communist in charge, are fighting back. For a while, Beijing stood back and let it happen. It was amazing. Now we're finally hearing rumblings that Beijing has shifted its support to Leung, and is trying to get the committee to vote for him. Incredibly, a few of the tycoons (including Asia's richest man, Li Ka Shing), are refusing! The plutocrats are defending their turf! Some even threatened to cast blank ballots.

The "election" is this Sunday, and there's a chance that nobody will win a majority (because the democrat-nobody-cares-about is still there, acting as a Nader), and there will have to be a run-off. Who woulda thunk. A fake election turns into a real contest.

But not a contest that in any way represents what Hong Kong's citizens want or need.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:09 pm 
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Wow. Just... wow. That is messed up on so many levels. I was trying to come up with something more intelligent to say, but I'm just floored by the sheer idiocy of it all.

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:04 am 
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I feel similarly when watching your primaries. Sometimes I really wonder why I still want democracy if what it gets you is Herman Cain running against Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:10 am 
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Here's a potential outcome - consider what may happen if people are prevented from turning in blank ballots.

You have three candidates - Tang, favoured by tycoons; Leung, favoured by patriots; and the democrat, favoured by no-one. There are signs of the ruling powers cracking up - at times like this, an intelligent and firm hand at the helm can patch up the cracks and help hold the ruling power together for a while (whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on the ruling power) - which may be part of why Beijing is favouring Leung now, incidentally.

You also have two voting powers - tycoons and patriots. Beijing applies pressure to the tycoons to vote for Leung, or at least not to vote for Tang. Defending their turf, the plutocrats refuse to vote for Leung, but manage to save themselves from the worst that Beijing can offer by agreeing not to vote for Tang. Some of the plutocrats then manage to persuade (or bribe) some of the less hardline patriots to vote for Tang, or at least not to vote for Leung. The patriots refuse to vote for Tang, but some are willing to accept a bribe not to vote for Leung. Everyone goes into the polling booths convinced that the democrat cannot win; it will likely come to a runoff vote, in which they can vote for their preferred candidate. So those who have been bribed or pressured into not voting for their preferred candidate in the original vote decide instead to vote for the democrat, in order to force a run-off. And if enough of them decide to vote for the democrat in the original vote...

Alright, it's an unlikely outcome, but wouldn't that be an interesting result?

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:42 am 
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Wouldn't happen. Apart from a small contingent of pro-democratic educators and social workers in the occupationally-based election committee, the vast majority of voters represent business interests who would rather cast blank ballots than vote for a democrat. (His name is Ho, by the way). Like all democrats, Ho has been blacklisted by Beijing and voting for him might result in the not so coincidental loss of business contracts and political access. This is why Hong Kong's democrats are so ineffective and incompetent - Beijing has been very successful in isolating them and making sure that everyone understands that they will never wield real power in this city. If you asked ordinary citizens who they'd vote for if there were a real election, fewer than 1 in 5 of them would pick the democrat.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:45 pm 
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The "election" was yesterday. C.Y. Leung will be our next Chief Executive. Enough arms were twisted that he managed to get about 57% of the votes, yet this still counts as the most closely "contested" CE race to date.

Leung: 689
Tang: 285
Ho (democrat): 76 votes
Invalid: 143

There were several hundred protesters outside the convention centre where the "election" was held yesterday. They got pepper sprayed. And Leung's own public approval ratings have dropped to 35%, seeing as people no longer have the dimwitted Tang* to compare him to. Now there's a promising start to a new term... For the record, Leung isn't an actual abolish-all-private-property Communist; he's got clique of millionaire supporters, and hardcore communists barely even exist in Mainland China anymore. But he probably does have a mean authoritarian streak.

* Worst PR damage control ever. The scandal that brought Tang down was in reality quite insigificant. He was found to have built himself a basement wine cellar-slash-luxury man cave in violation of building codes. It wouldn't have been a big deal if he had just apologized for it, but he screwed himself over by trotting out his wife to take the blame. A wife who he himself had previously admitted to cheating on. He turned a minor embarrassment into a "Man, what a douchebag" moment, and his approval ratings sank like a flat screen television in a basement flood.

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