Beijing snuffs out HK's piece of democracy

In real democracy, the voters chose representatives who then run or exercise control over the government. Only one small part of the Hong Kong government has been democratic in this way, but The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports that even this small piece of real democracy will be abolished at year's end.

HONG KONG (JP): The one tiny segment of government of the people by the people for the people, in the whole of China, has finally had its execution date approved. It will perish on Dec. 31, 1999.

On that day. the Urban Council and the Regional Council of Hong Kong will be finally scrapped as a result of the Legislative Council narrowly passing the abolition legislation on Dec. 2 by 31 votes to 27 on the third reading.

Putting this development in its wider context, Hong Kong now becomes at one with the rest of China in that government of the people by, and often for, the bureaucrats, has been wholy re- imposed on this former British colony.

For once, Hong Kong public relations has worked well. The final debate on the scrapping of the Urban and Regional Councils was fixed for a few days after Hong Kong had exuded the image of still being democratic, by holding the Nov. 28 elections for the district councils. Inaccurately, the district council vote was reported by one international news agency to be a "landmark election".

The fact that the district councils are merely consultative, with no executive power, was not highlighted. Additionally, the district councils are not even fully elected. The government will now appoint roughly one-fifth of district councillors, having earlier ended the brief period when the district councils were fully elected.

The image of a free election may have inadvertently persuaded foreigners that Hong Kong was going forward. In reality, it is going backwards.

Both those recently elected district councils, and the Legislative Council (Legco), one third of which was elected last year and will be elected again next year, represent only consultative democracy, at best. In Hong Kong, governing and democratic representation are separated -- rather than being integrated. Even the power of Legco to initiate legislation on its own is strictly limited -- some would say it is non-existent. The wholly unelected bureaucracy does all the initiating.

The Urban Council and, all too briefly, the more recently created Regional Council, were different. They were "the only government bodies which include elected members and exercise executive powers in directing the work of a government department", as Prof. Norman Miners succinctly put it. There you have it -- a small Hong Kong portion of government by the people of the people for the people, the only example of it within China. The powers that the two elected councils wielded were limited but they were real.

The Urban Council served the roughly three and a half million people in Hong Kong island and Kowloon while the Regional Council looked after the three million people in the increasingly urbanized New Territories. Both had roughly the same functions, being responsible for environmental hygiene, public health, sanitation, liquor licensing, and the provision of recreational, sports and cultural facilities.

Both were financially autonomous being sustained by licensing fees and property rates. Both had an executive arms directly under the Council's control. The proceedings of both Councils were open to the public.

Ironically,the need for better sanitation was the reason for the Urban Council (at first the Sanitary Board) being set up, and having two elected members as long ago as 1887, long before Legco ever did. Better sanitation was one of the government arguments for getting rid of these two elected bodies, the grounds being that the bird flu scare of 1998 would have been handled better had all health matters been under the control of the government bureaucracy.

At one stage, in between the end of World War II and the communist revolution in 1949, the British proposed greater democratic reform of the Urban Council as a means towards more representative government in Hong Kong. The Legco of the day, at that time wholly appointed, rejected the reforms in a famous debate in June 1949.

It was a pivotal moment in Hong Kong's political history, with the Legco vote ending the one meaningful democratic opportunity that Hong Kong ever had under British colonial rule. (By the time the last British Governor of the colony Christopher Patten tried to push a little democratic reform, it was very much a case of too little, too late).

In 1999, in contrast to 1949, it has been the Government which has sought to frustrate any thought of democratic reform, rather than to initiate it. There is no knowing whether the Beijing communist government quietly took the initiative in targeting the abolition of Hong Kong's Urban and Regional Councils. But within months of China assuming sovereignty in 1997, the China-appointed chief executive Tung Chee-hwa announced Council abolition as a fixed policy objective.

Now that policy has been enacted. As in 1949, so in 1999, conservative arguments, against retaining the Councils, rather than making them a vehicle for further democratic reform, have been advanced. Abolition has been broadly justified on the grounds of greater government efficiency and of reducing the tiers of government.

The directly-elected democrats in the Legislative Council naturally opposed the measure, but they do not constitute a clear majority. The Democratic Party, which won the most seats at last weeks district elections, was joined in opposition by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), the pro-Beijing party which made the greatest gains at the recent district council elections.

At one crucial moment, the DAB's opportunism, and divided loyalties, saved the day for the government. The party wanted to please the electorate by appearing to support the retention of the Councils, but it also wanted to follow the Beijing party line.

The abolition bill was bottled up in committee. A quick vote could have scuttled it for the time being. But while the government spokesman filibustered, one DAB member went out to a lunch with fishermen constituents, thereby enabling the abolition bill to proceed. In the third and final reading, the DAB voted against, but, by then, the government had the numbers it needed.

Overall, few Hong Kong people seemed to care about the abolition of their Urban and Regional Councils, and showed little passion in protecting the modest degree of democracy that their city already possesses. The Democratic Party is seeking judicial review of the abolition legislation as a violation of the Basic Law. But the judiciary, having just been overruled by Beijing on the vexed issue of mainland Chinese immigration to Hong Kong, appears unlikely, in the near future, to again take a strong human rights position which could be overruled by Beijing again.

So, on Dec. 31, democracy with limited but real executive powers will exit from China not with a bang, but a whimper. Bureaucratic authoritarianism will again reign supreme.