Lord Alton: Hong Kong’s district council election results show a dire need for a swift response from Carrie Lam – to launch political reforms

Hong Kong Watch’s Patron Lord Alton of Liverpool wrote an important op-ed in SCMP on 30 November 2019 saying that Carrie Lam and Beijing must urgently take steps to reform the system for electing the chief executive, making Hong Kong’s top leader accountable to the people.

Photo credit: Sam Tsang, SCMP

The elation was palpable on the streets of Hong Kong on November 25. An unprecedented turnout at the district council elections saw the pro-establishment bloc almost wiped out, their super majority shrunk to 13.3 per cent of the seats being contested, and Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s suggestion that a “silent majority” were opposed to the city’s pro-democracy campaigners left in tatters.

At the request of civil society organisations and the campaign group Stand With Hong Kong, I was in Hong Kong as part of the independent monitoring team which they had asked to observe the election.

Although we saw some infringements and irregularities, this was, by and large, a well-run, fair and free election. That citizens called for an international monitor of an election for local councils responsible for the bins, the drains and the traffic tells you a great deal.

Even more telling were the long queues at polling stations and the phenomenal turnout. This was less like a local election and more like a referendum – or vote of confidence – on Lam’s Hong Kong government.

These council elections are the only ones held in Hong Kong that are decided by the “one-person, one-vote”, first-past-the-post principle. Voters give their verdict through the ballot box: an unequivocal thumbs down to their government and a massive thumbs up to change.

They also sent a clear and courageous message to Beijing: that Hongkongers will not give up the rule of law and freedoms laid out in the “one country, two systems” arrangement.

The election results provide Lam with an excuse to take the bold steps needed for reform: it is vital that she does not squander this opportunity. Windows can close very quickly.

Our delegation, made up of international parliamentarians from across the world, proposed a range of recommendations based on clear inadequacies in the electoral process as well as deeper structural issues.

The current Electoral Affairs Commission is in danger of being compromised by the fact that it is appointed by the city's leader. The leadership should not be marking their own homework.

Hongkongers yearn for a transparent and trustworthy electoral system, not easily open to contamination and exploitation. Without losing face, Lam could easily deliver a truly independent commission, similar to those in other nations around the world, and win herself some much-needed praise and support.

However, although that would be a welcome start, the problems with Hong Kong’s political system extend far beyond the intricacies of the voting system.

The disqualification of Joshua Wong Chi-fung, and assaults on candidates from all sides, cast a shadow over the election. It is vital that the Hong Kong government stop their campaign of political screening and fully investigate this intimidation.

Above all, radical, root and branch, political reform is needed. The most critical demand of the protest movement is the call for universal suffrage. The status quo is no longer an option.

Six months of protests show that the current system, where a small committee, stuffed full of tycoons, elects the city’s leader, is unsustainable. It should surprise no one that there is a housing crisis in a system in which property tycoons are so disproportionately represented.

Hong Kong is one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. The city’s housing crisis is largely a result of tycoons working with their political allies to artificially inflate prices: whose bread I eat, his song I sing.

The citizens of our great cities – from London to New York, Paris to Berlin – have the power to hire and fire their mayors: it’s why things get done.

By contrast, Lam is trapped in a crippled system in which she is not accountable to the people and where she has become identified with all the causes of discontent – from bad housing to policing. Without undercutting the power base of the tycoons, there is no way of resolving this problem.

The dead hand of autocracy and oligarchic corruption cannot simply stifle the free air of Hong Kong. It will asphyxiate the very things Beijing values and needs.

Until now, Hong Kong has served China well as its international financial centre. More than 70 per cent of Chinese companies’ offshore initial public offerings take place in Hong Kong. But the current system is rigged in a way which will breed permanent discontent, political instability and reduce Hong Kong’s ability to serve this function: the best way of resolving that is through democratic reforms.

This may not be Beijing’s standard approach, but it would be in its best interests. It may even come to see its virtues – as millions of Hong Kong people were able to do through a secret ballot on November 24.

The district council elections were a moment of elation, but they point to the dire need for reform. Pessimists would have us believe that it’s inevitable that Hong Kong returns to the disfigurement and paralysis of tear gas, rubber bullets and Molotov cocktails.

Fighting the wrong battle in the last ditch, and surrendering to a sense of inevitability, would be a terrible defeat for all sides and not worthy of the popular and peaceful upsurge represented by ballots rather than bullets. Hong Kong and Beijing both need a fresh start rather than a resumption of paralysis.

Boldly turn the Councils into more than parish pumps – give them an immediate consultative role – devolve decisions and opportunities to them – pioneer reforms – and the Hong Kong government may come to see last Sunday’s elections as a decisive turning point, replacing the need for protest with the leadership and commitment demanded by the voters and indelibly printed on a landslide of ballot papers.

Lord Alton of Liverpool is a Patron of Hong Kong Watch, a cross-bench peer in the British parliament’s upper house and vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. The article was first published in SCMP on 30 November 2019.