Kapok: The king is naked

Until the jaw-dropping election of Donald Trump on November 9, all the feverish political discussions I have had on and off-line for almost a month somehow revolved around the controversial oath-taking and its ensuing rejection of the Youngspiration pair of newly elected Hong Kong legislators, Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung. That was the talk of the day (and night), and even those who professed to be “bored” or simply annoyed could not help commenting, discussing, and arguing. On my own Facebook page, that gave rise to the longest exchange of comments and responses I had ever had—and mainly with two “Friends”!

The bigger the stake, the higher the level of engagement. The saga aspect of the whole story, with its almost perfectly choreographed traumatic scene—visible and audible—on October 12 and its ensuing twists and turns for almost a month, largely explains the riveting effect it has produced. Moreover, the responsibility of the sudden changes of wind has been rather evenly shared: if the young radicals were the trigger, the pro-establishment forces “voluntarily” chose an unusually buoyant counter-attack to prevent the retaking of the oath, regarding which pan-democrats, old and new, objected vehemently, both vocally and physically.

The atmosphere was not subdued anymore in the LegCo chamber, and fingers were pointed at one another. Furthermore, all three sources of power were embroiled in the situation: the legislature, with its somewhat democratic legitimacy, entrenched the controversy, challenged in less than a week by the executive, requesting a judicial review from the High Court to not only prevent the Youngspiration legislators to retake their oath but to do it for good and thus unseat them.

Unity in both camps was initially far from absolute: not everybody agreed with the rather provocative stance of Yau and Leung among the pan-democrats and some pro-establishment voices were not acting outraged yet and believed things could be settled with a slap on the wrist. The just sworn-in president of the LegCo, Andrew Leung, was himself originally in favour of giving the troublemakers a second chance. When the first whispers of a possible intervention by the central authorities started to be heard, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen indicated that “the dispute […] should be resolved within the Hong Kong judicial system”. After much denial and confusing signs, the admission that an interpretation by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) regarding oath-taking was in the tubes came from a long-time representative for Hong Kong in the NPC (herself already in Beijing), Maria Tam. And the government’s face was somehow salvaged by the revelation that the interpretation had been requested by the Chairman of the NPC, Zhang Dejiang.

When the interpretation was ultimately made public, what the Central authorities consider acceptable or not became more forceful, to the point where the “one country-two systems” principle was irremediably breached: not only does the interpretation venture into law-making by defining the penalties incurred by the “offenders”—thus going farther than the interpretation power—but also provides ample room for political manipulation (define “a manner which is not sincere or not solemn”…). Hence the 13,000-strong participants in the preventive demonstration organised on November 6 to expose a possible abuse of power and the silent march by the legal profession gathering 2,000 people on November 8 to denounce what Democratic Party founder Martin Lee has called “a tank crashing into the legal system”.

What is truly unacceptable for Beijing is thus the self-determination agenda of some radical young democrats, even though the irony is that there was no significant independence-leaning claim in Hong Kong until two years ago—the PRC under the leadership of Xi Jinping has therefore managed to accomplish in less than three years what the British could not do in 155! And to make matters worse, insult was added to injury, although one could debate the actual insulting load of the “People’s Refucking of Chee-na”. The target is a regime, and Chee-na or Shina is not derogative per se, but rather a challenge to the centrality of the “Middle Kingdom”. But in the end, patriots only deal with absolutes! 

Published in Macau Daily Times on November 11, 2016

Kapok: Political Maturity

As Kenneth Chan, a former Civic Party legislator, puts it with a sarcastic bitter-sweet smile: advocating “universal suffrage” and “greater democracy” is not “sexy” anymore in Hong Kong, people want more, and they made their voice heard, loud and clear, via the ballot box, in what some dub an act of “resistance” to Beijing’s encroachment over glorified liberal values. The democratic camp has once again prevailed in the geographical constituencies of the Legco election, and even comforted its precious veto power over bills that require a two-third majority to be made into law.
Should we be surprised? As also acknowledged by Mr Chan, what we used to call the pan-democrats had been talking about and pushing for universal suffrage for more than 20 years with very limited results, quite the contrary. Beijing’s stiffening position regarding the degree of openness it would tolerate for the 2017 Chief Executive election, the growing estrangement of CY Leung, the present Chief Executive, from a politically savvy middle class and the rise of a youth-led protest movement that culminated with the Autumn 2014 Umbrella Movement were bound to have consequences. The signs of change had already become visible in the November 2015 district councils election and again in the February 2016 legislative by-election in the New Territories East constituency: so-called localist groups 本土派 had made a strong showing, thus vindicating the umbrella movement heritage.
But then, a general election was something of a different scale and the context had been changing fast: frustration and humiliation had triggered very adverse and boisterous reactions, but fear was creeping in, even more so with the booksellers disappearance of October 2015.
The scope of data available regarding the election is still limited, but as pointed out by political scientist Edmund Cheng, several observations can already be made.
As far as turnout is concerned — more than 58%; the highest ever — there is obviously a close correlation between street protests and high turnout: the previous record high was in 2004 in the wake of the massive protests against article 23.
The support for the pro-democracy camp (55%) and the pro-regime camp (around 40%) is steady, and the great novelty thus lies in the fragmentation of and the reshuffling of personnel within the pro-democracy camp, in favour of radicals, localists and supporters of self-determination — with the latter concept being fuzzy enough to allow for many interpretations, including a more neutral “community engagement”.
Clearly, there is a convergence between street politics and electoral politics: only two veteran pan-democrats who held their seats before 1997 made it this time and as many as 6 “umbrella generation” activists were elected in geographical constituencies. Is that enough to say with CY Leung that “a large number of voters were dissatisfied with the performance of the pro-democracy lawmakers in the past, and they didn’t formerly vote for the pro-establishment camp”?
For Edmund Cheng, in order to explain why the pro self-determination camp has been able to become a catch-all party in just one stroke, one has to look into structural changes and conjectural forms of mobilisation.
There were indeed transformative effects of the umbrella movement, both regarding the high level of turnout and the registration of new voters. Then the political-identity claim overrode socio-economic issues, although one could argue that the overall highest vote-getter, Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, actually ran a campaign with a comprehensive perspective underpinned by social justice and sustainability. And lastly, polarisation of the vote increased, with a generation gap translating into very differentiated voting reserves.
As far as context was concerned, the disqualification of pro-independence or localist candidates over the summer paved the way for “strategic voting” to become significant — thus uniting the “idealists” — and the influence of social media has become a distinctive and potent feature of electoral politics in this part of the world.
When and if rationality is concerned, vote allocation and strategic voting become crucial points, and social media can obviously compensate for the lack of resources. Points not to be forgotten for our own legislative elections in 2017.

Published in Macau Daily Times, September 16 2016