Hong Kong will elect its Legislative Council on Sept. 4, and Beijing is alarmed that among the candidates are young activists with a more confrontational policy toward the mainland. Its solution is to require candidates to sign a loyalty pledge affirming that Hong Kong is an “inalienable” part of China before they can register to run.
In the past week, election officers have disqualified six candidates for refusing to sign the pledge or, in the case of student activist Edward Leung, for signing it unconvincingly. The 25-year-old Mr. Leung, who ran in a by-election this year and earned 15% of the vote, promised to mute his past support for independence. But officials barred him anyway, citing Facebook posts and media statements as proof he hadn’t “genuinely changed” his stance.
Thirty leading lawyers, including past chairs of the Bar Association, blasted the government in a statement this week. Under Hong Kong law, they wrote, officials don’t have “any power to inquire into the so-called genuineness of the candidates’ declarations, let alone making a subjective and political decision to disqualify a candidate without following any due process on the purported ground that the candidate will not genuinely uphold the Basic Law.” The candidate bans, they added, “are not only unlawful but amount to political censorship and screening.”
As recently as the 75-day pro-democracy demonstrations of 2014, advocating independence for Hong Kong was a fringe position. But the government’s uncompromising response to those protests—and its eagerness to paint critics as radical subversives—made the cause more credible, especially among the young. Disqualifying pro-independence candidates could give the movement a further boost.
Weeks after the protests ended last year, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, used his annual policy address to slam an obscure Hong Kong University journal that wrote about “Hong Kong nationalism.” Copies of the journal quickly sold out and a survey of some 570 students found 28% backing independence, twice as many as the year before. A different, citywide survey this summer asked about independence for the first time and found 17% in favor, though only 4% think the goal is realistic.
Such numbers will rise if the purge of pro-independence candidates escalates into a mainland-style crackdown on “splittism.” The disqualified candidates are heading to court, where they’ll have a strong case that election officials have acted lawlessly.http://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kongs-pledge-of-allegiance-1470335490
Comments are closed.