Hong Kongers have suffered one delay after another on their path to full democracy since the territory's return to China in 1997. But that hasn't snuffed out their democratic spirit. Witness the results of Sunday's legislative elections.
Pro-democracy parties won 23 seats in the 60-member Legislative Council elections. That's down from 25 after the last election in 2004. But that's not the number that matters. Half of the legislature is appointed by special interest groups loyal to Beijing. The other half is directly elected by the people. In those seats, the democrats won 19 of 30, gaining a seat from the 2004 results. The democrats' losses came only from the ranks of special-interest legislators.
The result maintains the crucial veto pro-democracy parties have wielded over constitutional reforms by denying the pro-Beijing parties a 40-seat supermajority. This won't force Government House to push ahead with democracy faster, but it will keep Beijing from pushing any antidemocratic electoral "reforms."
Within the democratic movement, this election also marks a changing of the guard of sorts. Its best-known figureheads have left -- Democratic Party founder Martin Lee and former bureaucrat Anson Chan, both of whom announced their retirements before the election. Sunday's results thus give a mandate to a new generation of democratic voices in the legislature, like Kam Nai-wai, a 47-year-old social worker and member of the Democratic Party just elected to represent Hong Kong Island.
The result is also a slap in the face to the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the largest pro-Beijing group that campaigned for seats. The DAB is better funded and better organized than the pro-democracy crowd. In the run-up to Sunday's vote, the DAB blanketed the territory with advertisements. Chief Executive Donald Tsang did his part, too, rolling out a package of largesse including expanded electricity discounts, and hosting a star tour by China's Olympic athletes. Yet those efforts yielded only eight directly elected seats.
Voters clearly were frustrated with the government's economic record. Ahead of Sunday's polls, a Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme poll found 87% of voters said their decision would be driven by "livelihood" issues like housing and education, while 77% said they were "focusing" on economic policies. Little wonder: inflation is running 6.3% and GDP growth slowed to 4.2% in the second quarter, from 7.3% in the first.
On their face, the pro-Beijing and democratic policy platforms weren't that far apart. Unfortunately, both favor imposing a minimum wage and enacting a competition law. The key difference was that democrats also campaigned on holding Mr. Tsang's administration accountable for its perceived policy blunders. This suggests that Hong Kongers understand better than some of their leaders the relationship between democracy and prosperity.
Skeptics will note that turnout, at about 45%, was 10 percentage points lower than in the last general election, in 2004. But Hong Kong's turnout was still high by the standards of some other democracies. In 2006 in the U.S., when a very unpopular executive faced a legislative election, only 41% of voters turned out. So it's hard to argue that Hong Kongers are not interested in democracy now.
Sunday's election is another reminder that the territory deserves a democratic system worthy of its voters.
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