Pro-Beijing group plans new petition to support Hong Kong electoral reform
A pro-Beijing group that last year circulated a petition against the Occupy movement will stage a city-wide signature campaign next week in an attempt to put pressure on pan-democrats to support the government's electoral reform package.
A pro-Beijing group that last year circulated a petition against the Occupy movement will stage a city-wide signature campaign next week in an attempt to put pressure on pan-democrats to support the government's electoral reform package.
The Alliance for Peace and Democracy - which claims to have 1,000 member organisations - intends to set up hundreds of booths to gather signatures from Hongkongers aged 18 and above.
But critics have already cast doubt on the credibility of the exercise as those who sign will not have to provide any proof of identity, meaning they could sign repeatedly or use fake names.
"Judging from the previous experience, I believe people will only sign once," a spokesman for the alliance, Robert Chow Yung, said as the group announced the campaign yesterday morning.
Chow was referring to the group's petition in October last year, which organisers said gained 1.83 million signatures from street-side booths and online. However, its credibility was called into question as media reports emerged of people signing up with fake names and identity card numbers, even though they were required to provide proof of identity.
In order for the reform package to pass, two-thirds of the Legislative Council's 70 lawmakers must vote for it. That means at least four pan-democrats must break ranks and vote yes.
The reform package unveiled last month follows Beijing's stringent framework handed down in August, which stipulates that just two or three candidates for chief executive will go before the city's entire electorate in 2017 after they gain majority support from a 1,200-member nominating committee. All 27 pan-democrats have repeatedly vowed to vote down the reform, which they say does not give Hongkongers a genuine choice of candidates.
Chow said the nine-day signature drive would start on Saturday. Organisers plan to set up 400 booths across the city on weekdays, and 800 on weekends.
He declined to estimate how many signatures they were aiming to collect, but said the pan-democrats should rethink their stance to veto the reform if they could collect more than 800,000 signatures - the number of votes that pro-establishment camp candidates obtained in the 2012 Legco election.
"It means pan-democratic lawmakers should calculate if they could gain more support in the next Legco election if they instead vote for the reform," Chow said.
He said people who appeared to be underage or non-Hong Kong residents might be asked to show their identity cards, but they would not be obliged to provide them before signing.
Government officials had not been invited to take part in the campaign, Chow said. However, he declined to respond directly when asked whether the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong was involved in the campaign.
