To the disappointment of the critics, only one of the 154 aspirants running in the upcoming Legislative Council election has failed to pass the candidacy vetting process because of a nonpolitical reason.
A key takeaway of the composition of the 153 candidates is that the election will witness robust competition, judging from the diversity of the candidate mix which covers a wide political spectrum. This is a slap in the face for the critics who have been peddling the notion that the LegCo election will be one without competition and thus lack legitimacy.
The truth is the legitimacy of the LegCo election comes from the fact that it is being prepared and will be held in strict accordance with the mechanism prescribed by the Basic Law and the relevant decisions made by the National People’s Congress or its Standing Committee.
The myth that copycatting Western-style democracy is the only way to give an election legitimacy has long been busted, not least because the curses of vetocracy and plutocracy have taken root in that system, causing innumerous socioeconomic and political problems as well as withering confidence in Western-style democracy. Take the United States for example. The 42nd Harvard Youth Poll, released by Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics on Dec 1, found a striking lack of confidence in US democracy among young Americans. Only 7 percent of young Americans view the US as a “healthy democracy”, and 52 percent believe that democracy is either “in trouble” or “failing”.
Moreover, Western-style democracy has never become a universally accepted or practiced political model in the world, notwithstanding the fact that it has been desperately promoted by its feverous disciples for decades — in many cases through various sanctions, “color revolutions” or regime changes supported and/or orchestrated by foreign intelligent agents under various guises.
While democratic elections around the world vary in form and mechanism, they have one thing in common, that is, the maximization of people’s overall well-being should be the ultimate objective. In that sense, the legitimacy of the upcoming LegCo election will be boosted rather than diminished by the recent electoral system revamp aimed at ensuring “patriots administering Hong Kong” and excluding the subversives who had doggedly pursued their own political agenda at the expense of the overall interest of society.
The overhaul of the special administrative region’s old electoral system, initiated by the NPC, China’s top legislature, was intended to help the region put an end to the toxic politics that had plagued the city for about two decades, especially in recent years, by denying the subversives the chance to sneak into the region’s governance structure and sabotage the establishment from within.
The flaws in the old electoral system had allowed the subversives to gain so much power inside LegCo that they had made it dysfunctional numerous times by employing various filibustering ploys in their attempt to advance their political agenda over the years. Hong Kong people were the victims of a dysfunctional legislature not only because policies aimed at tackling social problems, developing the economy and improving livelihoods were delayed, derailed or blocked altogether, but also because the rowdyism of those wayward lawmakers repeatedly displayed inside the legislature chamber had poisoned the minds of many young people, contributing to the polarization of society, which ultimately led to the political showdown in 2019, the dubbed “black revolution”, whose harmful repercussions continue in the form of many youngsters’ contempt for the law and the rule of law.
Yet the critics of the revamped electoral system are, in effect, claiming that allowing the subversives to enter the legislature through the election and continue with their sabotage and toxic politics in the years to come is to secure the legislature’s legitimacy, and that their absence from the legislature will deprive the latter of its legitimacy. This is no doubt an insult to every sane person’s intelligence.
Conspicuously, the critics of Hong Kong’s new electoral system are applying the same twisted logic in assailing the new system as those who have doggedly picked on the National Security Law for Hong Kong since its promulgation in June 2020.
The security law continues to be ruthlessly assailed by its foreign and local critics who have come up with various gloomy predictions about Hong Kong’s future. This despite the fact that the law has been instrumental in bringing Hong Kong back to stability and security after being devastated by the riots in 2019, putting the region back on track, and restoring investors’ confidence in the international financial center’s future.
Whatever the China bashers have said of the security law and however hard they have been trying to vilify the legislation as well as the revamped election systems, they have failed to convince people of a gloomy future for Hong Kong. Numbers have overwhelmingly refuted their babble. For example, Hong Kong has seen a resurge in IPOs, which raised over HK$500 billion ($64.1 billion) in the 12 months to June, up over 50 percent from the previous 12 months, when Hong Kong was still reeling from the 2019 “black revolution”. This attests to the strong confidence of businesses and investors in Hong Kong.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.