Regina Ip

Opinion | Hong Kong election reform: city is not beholden to the ways of broken Western democracies

Western criticism of the revamp should be dismissed as meaningless and empty. Worldwide electoral democracies are exhibiting serious flaws, and Hong Kong should not shudder at embracing new thinking

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Seats sit empty in a meeting room at the Legislative Council building in Tamar on March 29. Photo: Paul Yeung

Regina Ip

Published: 3:30am, 4 Apr 2021Updated: 3:30am, 4 Apr 2021

On March 30, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee made wide-ranging changes to Annex 1 and Annex 2 to the Basic Law, which govern the methods for selecting the chief executive of Hong Kong and forming the legislature. The ostensible purposes are to ensure patriots rule Hong Kong and to perfect Hong Kong’s electoral system.

The decisions triggered a chorus of condemnations from a bloc of democratic countries. The United States, United Kingdom, the European Union and Japan denounced the changes as in breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, undermining the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong, further reducing political participation and representation in Hong Kong and defying the will of the people.

These complaints should be dismissed as empty words with no real meaning. Who are these foreign powers to judge what is best for the people of Hong Kong? How can any of them justifiably claim to represent the will of the people when opinion is so polarised in their own countries and seats often awarded on razor-thin margins?

The changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system will reduce the role played by mass elections in forming the Election Committee which selects the chief executive and the legislature. That is no bad thing for Hong Kong. Election is by no means the sole yardstick for measuring whether a political system serves the interests of the people.

Writing in 1991 on the crest of the “third wave” of democratisation, American political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote that “the definition of democracy in terms of elections is a minimal definition”. A system of government that permits widespread mass participation has no intrinsic value if it does not deliver good governance.

Alan Leong Kah-kit (left) and Jeremy Tam Man-ho of the Civic Party campaign on July 17, 2016 in the run-up to the Legislative Council elections that year. Elections will play a lesser role in Hong Kong politics under new rules mandated by the NPC. Photo: Dickson Lee

For a long time, Hong Kong was governed under a system which did not permit mass participation in forming its government or the legislature, but it worked well. That system, among other factors, enabled Hong Kong to become part of the “East Asian miracle”. Much can be said about a system underpinned by strong rule of law, albeit without mass elections, and aided by an independent judiciary and a capable and confident public service unencumbered by political feuding.