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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