Critics of the patriot-vetting mechanism introduced in the 2021 electoral reforms recently received a stern rebuke from Xia Baolong, director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office. Commenting on the Dec 19 Legislative Council election before election day, Xia said the principle of “patriots administering Hong Kong” afforded a great amount of political inclusiveness and diversity in the election. The LegCo election results have vindicated his notion of the new electoral system. Equally enlightening was his thought-provoking reminder that Western-style democracy did not bring genuine democracy to Hong Kong.
Because of the vetting mechanism, critics argued that even “middle of the road” candidates have been snubbed by supporters of the “pro-democracy” camps. The mere fact that these politically moderate candidates are required to secure enough nominations from the Election Committee has prevented them from getting support from the “democrats” and their supporters. A recent survey by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute found 86 percent of the respondents who identified themselves as supporters of the “pro-democracy” camp said they felt no candidate running for a seat in the directly elected Geographical Constituency was worthy of their vote.
With strong ideational attachment to Western-style democracy, in particular the Anglo-Saxon model of democracy, supporters of the “pro-democracy” camp seem to have legitimate grounds to criticize the vetting mechanism in Hong Kong and support the seemingly open and competitive electoral models of Western democratic countries. On closer examination, however, some Western democratic countries do have hidden vetting mechanisms incorporated into their electoral systems. The failure of the two-party system in the United States to represent the poorly organized and articulated political views of the silent majority recently attracted a firestorm of criticism.
The Anglo-Saxon model of a two-party system is not inclusive because it has relegated small parties and their supporters to the sidelines. Unlike Hong Kong’s candidate-based vetting mechanism, the hidden vetting mechanism in the US is voter-based and has a greater disenfranchising effect
The Anglo-Saxon model of a two-party system is not inclusive because it has relegated small parties and their supporters to the sidelines. Unlike Hong Kong’s candidate-based vetting mechanism, the hidden vetting mechanism in the US is voter-based and has a greater disenfranchising effect. The Pew Research Center found eight distinct categories of political ideology in the US. But a 2016 Gallup poll stated that 60 percent of Americans believed that both the Democrats and Republicans did a poor job of representing the American people. These respondents wanted a new political party. To complicate matters further, a Pew study found that the two existing parties limit choices and are more interested in combating each other. Unsurprisingly, a November 2021 Pew Research poll of respondents in 17 countries found just 17 percent considered the US as a good model for democracy.
When Donald Trump was in power, he attached disproportionately greater weight to the political views of the pro-Republican core conservatives and the Country First conservatives. These vocal minority groups played an active role in supporting Trump during his election campaign. In return, these two groups passed the screening test and Trump introduced policies to promote their interests. Although many members of the New Era Enterprisers supported the Republicans, Trump did not embrace their socially liberal views. Prior to the presidential election, the Republicans and Democrats’ internal fights to get a nomination are also candidate-based screening tests. Another defect of the simple majority system was that Trump was not a cheerleader for the values and political views of the Democrats. It inevitably resulted in bipartisan polarization and vetocracy.
Feeling unrepresented, some American voters have lost interest in elections. As Karl Jackson and Giovanna Maria Dora Dore have correctly pointed out, the ideal of the rational, highly informed and interested voter is simply a myth in the US. In many elections at the state and local level, the most frequent voter is the non-voter. Many interest groups, on the other hand, are interested in investing huge sums of money to illegitimately manipulate the electoral process behind the scenes. If they back the right horse, they will be able to influence specific government policies in their desired directions. There is substantial substance in the criticism made by China that US democracy is a dysfunctional game of money politics run by elites.
Much ink has been spilled examining whether “minority choice” confers a legitimacy on the elected government. “Minority choice” means the government is formed by the winning party, which constitutes a minority of the adult population. When Rodrigo Duterte became the president of the Philippines in 2016, he got only 39 percent of the vote in an election in which 82 percent of registered voters cast ballots. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush was elected as the president of the US without a popular-vote victory. It was the fourth of the five American presidential elections in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote. An elected candidate without a popular vote also calls into question the legitimizing effect brought about by competitive elections.
Highlighting the gap between the theory and practice of input legitimacy, the above discussion vindicates concerns that a hidden vetting mechanism and a “minority choice” associated with the electoral systems of some Western democratic countries have brought to the forefront a diluting effect of these defects on legitimacy. In addition to considering these defects, we should adopt a holistic approach by incorporating the theory of defensive democracy (which justifies the need to look beyond the superficial indispensability of a competitive election under special security circumstances and take drastic measures to build palisades to protect the core values of democracy) and the theory of output legitimacy (which justifies the need to incorporate a post-election accountability system to ensure good governance) into our analytical framework to examine whether the patriot-vetting mechanism can safeguard democracy and promote good governance in Hong Kong.
Xia has unequivocally provided us with a right answer. The Western-style democracy failed and will continue to fail to bring genuine democracy to us. Because Hong Kong needs a candidate-based vetting system to safeguard democracy and national security, we must place reasonable and necessary restrictions to screen out unpatriotic disruptors. In spite of the restrictions, the new electoral system allows great diversity and political inclusiveness. According to Liu Guangyuan, the Foreign Ministry’s commissioner in Hong Kong, the city’s livelihood problems will soon be resolved because of the good governance brought about by electoral reforms.
The author is a barrister, a member of Chinese Academic Networks and co-founder of Together We Can
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.