March for Democracy, a small sign of dissent
Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – Tomorrows rally was organised by the Democrat-Allies in HK-SAR. Although Cardinal Zen recently offered his supportive blessing to the campaign, he himself will not join the rank.
The rally will form part of the current program demanding for general suffrage in 2012. The general suffrage in Hong Kong, both for its Chief Executive and for members of the Legislative Council, had originally been scheduled for 2008; this was acknowledged by Beijing before 1997. But the communist regime later altered the plan and put off the date indefinitely.
Until now, Hong Kong was allowed a voting system that would permit only 800 delegates to vote on behalf of a population of more than 6.5 million people. The majority of the 800 voting delegates were carefully picked by the government under the auspices of Beijing. The entire system was overtly designed and blessed by Beijing.
Altogether there are 40 delegates from the 800 voting delegation representing the 6 large religions in Hong Kong. The Catholic community is entitled to a quota of seven. At present, Hong Kong is preparing to ‘elect’ the next Chief Executive, so all sectors in the society are seemingly busy to select their representatives. The Christians mobilised their 350,000 members to electing the delegates, while the Buddhists preferred a module of assigning. The Catholics stuck to a principle of ‘passive adherence’: they simply acknowledged the result of a raffle that ended up in gathering 7 name-tags.
Obviously, Cardinal Zen, together with the 230,000 local Catholic population, has maintained a passive attitude to any form of election other than general suffrage.
The current election for the next CE will be scheduled for March 25, Sunday. The system practically will pick the right candidate since it is engineered to allow only one contender. Donald Tsang, the present CE, himself a devout Catholic, is the designated choice, the only assigned candidate.
However, the democrats have tried to put forth a candidate to challenge Tsang. Allen Leung, also a Catholic, succeeded in collecting some 130 nominations from the 800 voters, though he knew very well he would never get enough votes when the election proper took place. Leung rightly endeavoured to force Tsang to turn more accountable to the public instead of to Beijing. And the two made up a political ‘show’ of debating and lobbying as if the election could fairly decide upon the next CE.
Every citizen in Hong Kong knows well that Tsang will definitely take the seat, just because he has been picked by Beijing. The show, nevertheless, could not stop. So, the rally was organised to promote the campaign for general suffrage. Not too many people are expected to join: even the organisers themselves had registered earlier with the Police that only two thousand people would join the rally on Sunday.
In fact, the inclusion of the rally looks incongruous with the current election. However, this could be the only way the democrats could express their utmost desire for a general suffrage rather than the current ‘small-circle’ election. Perhaps this is also the reason why Cardinal Zen has maintained his silence on the current election. Apparently, he is looking forward to a genuine election in which every citizen can participate.
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