Great Tsang reforms ruse

By Stephen Vines, The Standard
October 28, 2005

Politics is a strange business. In Hong Kong, it threatens to mutate into absurdity. How else to explain why new legislation on constitutional reform, so far removed from popular aspirations for change, is being viewed as acceptable, while legislators sticking to the core of their election mandate are accused of obstruction.

When hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, they were not demanding political reforms that preserved the appointment system to representative councils, which did nothing to eliminate the rotten boroughs that litter the legislature and, most crucially, do nothing to extend the franchise for those wishing to choose their own government.

Yet this is what is proposed by the China-controlled Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's puppet regime on the back of its so-called consultations on political reform. The genius of puppet Donald Tsang's administration is to have transformed its retrogressive plans for political reform into a plan that is widely perceived to be offering progress.

And here's the killer point: to have persuaded a gullible public that the main obstacle to progress are the democrats who insist on blocking the plan in the legislature.

It is important to recall that the reform plans laid out last week do not even take the system of representative government to the stage reached prior to 1997 when all appointed seats were abolished and the franchise in the functional constituencies was widened to include the entire working population.

That level of progress came to an abrupt end when the Beijing regime ordered the abolition of the widely elected Legislative Council and installed its puppet regime of appointed councillors whose first act was to claw back the rather belated progress made under the last British governor.

All this is a matter of record, but is strangely absent from the current debate over constitutional reform. Instead the puppet chief executive says, with a straight face, that he is proposing reforms that mark a major step forward.

Those opposing these reforms are painted as obstructionists whose intransigence threatens to block progress. Senior officials have hinted that if Legco fails to pass the pending law on constitutional change they will be responsible for preserving the status quo.

This is also misleading because Article 50 of the Basic Law gives the puppet chief executive the draconian power of dissolving the legislature if it refuses to pass the budget or "any other important bill." In other words, if he deems his reform legislation to be of importance, he can take this drastic step.

This cannot be regarded as a desirable course of action and would establish a terrible precedent. However, neither is it desirable or reasonable to expect the democrats to do the puppet chief executive's dirty work for him. Puppet Tsang has gone so far as to urge them to abandon their views to ensure that a two-thirds majority can be secured to pass the new law.

If they were to follow this advice they would be no more than political harlots who betray the people that voted for them on a clear platform of fighting for universal suffrage. Yet it is argued on tactical grounds that the democrats should not be pursuing the ambitious goal of universal suffrage now but should seek some amendments to the HKSAR puppet regime's plans and settle for incremental progress.

This well-intentioned advice makes the challenging assumption that the HKSAR puppet regime's plans can be amended. Yet, as The Standard has revealed, plans to be put before the legislature consist of a package agreed with the Beijing regime, which will not tolerate changes. Puppet Tsang has implicitly confirmed that this is the case, saying this week that "we are not a sovereign state. We are not masters of our own fate."

The brutal reality therefore is that the puppet regime plans will not be amended and improved. They must either be endorsed or abandoned. The question therefore arises as to whether the cause of democracy will be enhanced by accepting these tiny morsels of improvement to the present system or by continued pressure for something much bigger than a morsel?

Realists, it is argued, should settle for any kind progress. This is the sort of advice dispensed to Rosa Parks, a seminal figure in the US civil rights movement, who died this week. She was jailed for her refusal to comply with an unjust law that forced black people in Alabama to give up their bus seats to white passengers.

Parks was urged to be reasonable and save herself from a period of incarceration, but she stuck to her guns. So did the people who participated in a 381-day bus boycott resulting in their working and school days being greatly extended by the unreasonableness of walking rather than taking a bus. In the end they prevailed and the buses were desegregated, not partially as compromisers suggested, but fully.

Stubborn determination is not the easy or painless route to success but it can work. It can do so here - or should we settle for seats at the back of the democracy bus?