2014–2015 Hong Kong electoral reform

The 2014 Hong Kong electoral reform consultation is an ongoing public consultation put forth by the Hong Kong government on the electoral reform on the 2017 Chief Executive election and the 2016 Legislative Council elections. The five-month consultation period was launched on 4 December 2013 with the publication of the Consultation Document on the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive in 2017 and for Forming the Legislative Council in 2016. The government will generate the public opinions and put forward an electoral reform proposal by 2015.

Background

Main article: Democratic development in Hong Kong

The electoral method of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (CE) and Legislative Council (LegCo) has been a long debated issues in Hong Kong since the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December 1984. The Annex I of the Joint Declaration states that the chief executive shall be selected by election or through consultations and the legislature of the HKSAR shall be constituted by elections. In the Hong Kong Basic Law promulgated in 1990, the ultimate aim of selecting the Chief Executive and all members of the Legislative Council by way of universal suffrage is guaranteed respectively in Article 45 and Article 68.

The pro-democracy camp which had about 60% of the popular vote in the LegCo elections has been urged for the universal suffrage for CE and LegCo since the 1990s. There are also thousands of Hong Kong people showed up at the annual July 1 marches demanding genuine democracy as promised in the Basic Law.

In July 2007 the Donald Tsang administration published the Green Paper on Constitutional Development to consult the pubic on the options, roadmap, and timetable for implementing universal suffrage. In December 2007, Donald Tsang submitted a report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC). Following that, the NPCSC made the decision that provides:

The election of the fifth Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the year 2017 may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage, that after the Chief Executive is selected by universal suffrage, the election of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may be implemented by the method of electing all members by universal suffrage.

The NPCSC Decision rules out the universal suffrage in the 2012 CE election and 2012 LegCo Election but on the other hand provides the possibility of universal suffrage for CE in 2017 and LegCo in 2020.

Key issues

Love China and love Hong Kong

On 24 March 2013, Qiao Xiaoyang, chairman of the Law Committee under the National People's Congress Standing Committee stated that Chief Executive candidates must be persons who love the country and love Hong Kong, who do not insist on confronting the central government. Observers stated that Qiao comment was to screen out candidates from the opposition pro-democracy camp.

Li Fei, Qiao's successor as chairman of the NPCSC Law Committee stressed the similar statement on 22 November 2013, "the chief executive is accountable to the central government as well as Hong Kong. This means that the post must be taken up by a person who loves the country as well as Hong Kong - anyone opposed to the central government cannot [take it]."

Public nomination

Some pan-democrats also demand the right of Hong Kong residents to nominate a CE candidate. Student-led group Scholarism in September 2013 called for parties to sign a charter which lists public nomination as a priority. Under the public nomination proposal, the nominating committee may put forward to run those candidates who receive a quota of nominations from ordinary voters. The Democratic Party, Labour Party and Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood refused to sign it as they disagree that public nomination is the only way to put forward candidates. Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen raised legal arguments against public nomination as he claimed it may bypass the nominating committee and "turn it into a plastic stamp" as Article 45 of the Basic Law states that "the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures."

Organisation nomination

Qiao Xiaoyang also mentioned in his speech on 24 March 2013 that “the nominating committee is in fact an organisation. The nomination of CE candidates by the nominating committee is a form of organisational nomination. It is opposed by the pan-democracy camp as the method to screen out the opposition candidates as the pan-democrat candidates would not get a majority support from the nominating committee. The pan-democrat candidates were able to enter the last CE elections by getting just one-eighth of the nomination threshold from the Election Committee. There were also some interpretations that an organisational nomination would be a breach of the Basic Law.

Public consultation

The Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced on 17 October 2013 the immediate establishment of the Task Force on Constitutional Development headed by the Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen, and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam as members to handle the public consultation. On 4 December 2013, the Consultation Document on the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive in 2017 and for Forming the Legislative Council in 2016, entitled "Let’s Talk and Achieve Universal Suffrage", was published which commenced a five-month public consultation period.

Pan-democracy camp

On 21 March 2013, 12 pan-democratic groups on the basis of the Alliance for Universal Suffrage for the 2010 electorla reform formed the Alliance for True Democracy. Chaired by Convenor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong, the alliance priority would be to strive for public support in the political reform debate, and to form a consensus proposal by the end of the year.

A group called Hong Kong 2020, launched by Convenor Anson Chan, the former Chief Secretary for Administration on 24 April 2013, comprising of members such as Allen Lee, Johannes Chan, and Gladys Li, strives for the full implementation of the universal suffrage for 2017 CE election and 2020 LegCo election.

The New Year demonstration for genuine democracy on 1 January 2014 drew thousands of people. A "New Year Civil Referendum" was also conducted at the Victoria Park and over the Internet on the same day. More than 94 percent of over 62,000 voters thought that there should be an "element of civil nomination" in the CE election.

Occupy Central movement

Main article: Occupy Central (2014)

In early 2013, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong started the campaign called "Occupy Central with Love and Peace" that proposes an nonviolent occupation protest at Central, Hong Kong in mid 2014 if promises made by the Central People's Government for universal suffrage were not realized.

Alternative proposals

Ronny Tong's proposal

Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong put forward an initial proposal for the Chief Executive universal suffrage in October 2013 and supported by Professional Commons legislators Dennis Kwok, Charles Mok and Kenneth Leung. The proposal suggests to increase the membership of nominating committee from the 1,200 member Election Committee to 1,514 and maintain the nomination threshold of 150 votes. Tong recommended the instant runoff voting system, which is used in Ireland, Australia, Sir Lanka, and mayoral elections in London, San Francisco, and some governors in the states of the United States, in order to have the elected CE who could accepted by all sectors. Tong also recommended to cancel existing law which disallows the Chief Executive belonging to a political party membership. Dennis Kwok suggests to increase the electorate base of the nominating committee to 1 million, which fulfills the "broadly representative" principle.

Hong Kong Democratic Foundation

The think tank Hong Kong Democratic Foundation (HKDF) also sets out proposals of 2016 Legislative Council elections and 2017 Chief Executive universal suffrage on 29 May 2013.

The HKDF suggests those Functional Constituencies (FC) in which voting includes corporate voters to be replaced by individual votes from staff and management members of companies, organizations or institutions that are the constituent members of each FC. For the 5 District Council FC seats requiring candidates to be District Councilors, that qualification would be removed and the 5 seats be reconstituted as a territory-wide geographical constituency (TWGC). The additional 1 seat added to each geographical constituency (GC) for the 2012 LegCo election should be transferred to the TWGC, so that this constituency would comprise 10 seats. A further 10 new LegCo seats would be added to the TWGC. Candidates for the TWGC would be required to secure a minimum of 500 nominations, 100 nominations from registered voters in each of the 5 GCs. In conclusion, the 2016 Legislative Council would consist of total 80 seats:30 seats from 5 Geographical Constituencies; 30 seats from Functional Constituencies and; 20 seats from the Territory-wide Geographical Constituency.

There are three alternatives for the formation of the nominating committee for electing the Chief Executive:

• By direct election of registered voters electing 3 members in each of the 400 District Council sub-constituencies by the Single Transferable Voting system.
• Nomination committee based on 2012 CE election committee with all corporate votes replaced by individual votes from staff and management of companies in each sector and all elected district councilors to join the nominating committee.
• Nominating committee formed through random selection of a statistically representative sample from all registered voters.

HKDF suggested Any Chinese national who is a registered GC voter can become a potential candidate with nominations from at least 1/8 of the members of the Nominating Committee (NC) or with at least 100,000 nominations from registered GC voters. All candidates once elected to be nominated by the NC have to affirm to abide by the Oath of the CE Office. After the closing date for submission of requests for nominations by candidates, the NC (e.g. jointly signed by 100 NC members) has right to evaluate the nominations for compliance with the rules after his or her declaration of candidacy and make complaint to the Electoral Affairs Commission to start a judicial process of removing the candidate. The final list of qualified nominated candidates will stand for election by universal suffrage, using the two-round system. A second round of CE elections will be held if no candidate received more than 50% of the votes and the two candidates with the highest vote count will proceed to the second round.

Scholarism's statement

Student group Scholarism issued a statement on 23 June 2013 stressed the necessity of civil nomination for the 2017 Chief Executive election. For the 2016 Legislative Council elections, it called for the abolition of the split voting in the Legislative Council; increase of the Geographical Constituency seats to about 60%; and transfer of the District Council (Second) seats to the Geographical Constituency. For the 2017 Chief Executive universal suffrage, it suggests to let all 3.5 million registered voters to be the nominating committee, the nomination threshold to be 100 thousand voters and to allow the Chief Executive to have political party membership. For the 2020 Legislative Council universal suffrage, the Scholarism suggested the abolition of the Functional Constituencies and increase of the membership of the LegCo from 70 to 80 seats, half of them elected by constituency-wide proportional representation and the other half by territory-wide proportional representation.

Alliance for True Democracy

On 8 January 2014, the Alliance for True Democracy (ATD) released its "Chief Executive Election Plan" with the support of all 27 pro-democratic Legislative Council members. The election plan includes three channels for nomination: civil nomination, political party nomination, and nomination by the nominating committee. Civil nomination demands a candidate to secure the signed endorsement of 1% of the registered voters; political party nomination requires a political party receiving 5% or more of the total valid votes in the last Legislative Council direct election. The nominating committee shall not refuse to endorse any civil and political party nominees who meet the legal requirements, such as not less than 40 years old, has no right of abode in any foreign country; political conditions such as “love China, love Hong Kong” and “no confrontations with Beijing” are not acceptable. The Alliance also demands the abolition of the existing stipulation which disallows the Chief Executive belonging to a political party membership.

For the Legislative Council elections, the Scholars Group of the ATD put forward proposals for the transition toward the universal suffrage: For 2016 Legislative Council Election, he Scholars Group suggests:

Proposal A

Proposal B

Number of seats in Legislative Council increases to 80. 60 seats elected by universal suffrage, including 35 seats by proportional representation with the current division of constituency. 25 seats will be elected under proportional representation with the whole Hong Kong as a constituency. There is no election threshold, and the largest remainder method” and Hare quota are adopted. Each voter would then have two votes in two tiers of proportional representation. Functional Constituency is reduced to 20 seats. In the 30 current traditional FC seats, there are 9 seats for professional sectors; 15 seats for commercial and economic sectors; and 6 seats for social and political sectors. We suggest combine those seats into three large constituencies along the lines above, with each constituency returning two-thirds of its original number of seats. That is, the professional sectors will return 6 seats; 10 seats for commercial and economic sectors; 4 seats for social and political sectors. In each constituency, each elector can cast only one vote. The candidates that get the most votes win. The District Council (II) FC seats will be cancelled. Split Voting in the Legco will be abolished.

Number of seats in Legislative Council is 80. 60 seats will be elected by universal suffrage, including 35 seats by proportional representation with current division of constituencies. 25 seats will be elected by FPTP. Hong Kong is divided into 25 constituencies, with about 150,000 voters in each constituency. Functional Constituency is reduced to 20 seats. In the 30 current traditional FC seats, there are 9 seats for professional sectors; 15 seats for commercial and economic sectors; and 6 seats for social and political sectors. We suggest combine those seats into three large constituencies along the lines above, with each constituency returning two-thirds of its original number of seats. That is, the professional sectors will return 6 seats; 10 seats for commercial and economic sectors; 4 seats for social and political sectors. In each constituency, each elector can cast only one vote. The candidates that get the most votes win. The District Council (II) FC seats will be cancelled. Split Voting in the Legco will be abolished.

For the universal suffrage of the Legislative Council, there are two proposals from the Scholar Group:

Proposal A

Proposal B

Total number of seats in Legislative Council is 90. 40 seats will be elected under first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. With approximately 4 million registered voters, there would be about 100,000 voters in each constituency. 50 seats will be elected by proportional representation, with the whole Hong Kong as one constituency with current largest remainder method and Hare quota. There is no election threshold in the proposal, any list that obtains more than 2% of votes (assuming voter turnout rate is about 50%, that is about 40,000 votes) can secure one seat. Compare to proposal B, this proposal has fewer seats elected under FPTP, and has no election threshold, it would be relatively beneficial to small parties.

Number of seats in Legislative Council is 90. 50 seats will be elected under FPTP. With about 4 million registered voters with estimated about 80,000 voters in each constituency. 40 seats will be elected under “proportional representation”. Hong Kong will be divided into 6 to 7 constituencies, each constituency will return 6 to 7 seats, and D'Hondt method will be adopted. Compare to proposal A, this proposal has more seats elected under FPTP. The estimation is that parties with vote share lower than 5% may not get elected. The adoption of the D'Hondt method will reduce the fragmentation of the Legco.

See also

• Chief Executive of Hong Kong
• Democratic development in Hong Kong
• Legislative Council of Hong Kong
• Occupy Central (2014)

External links

• Consultation Document on the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive in 2017 and for Forming the Legislative Council in 2016