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April 29, 2006

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Any colour you like

Henry Ford once said you can have a Model T car any colour you like, so long as it's black. So too China's attitude to Hong Kong democracy. From the SCMP:

Guardian Wang Zhenmin, deputy dean of Tsinghua University's law school, set out six failings that demonstrate the city is not ready for universal suffrage.
The six criteria are:

1. There's no community consensus over democracy - an ironic reason not to introduce a means of expressing alternative points of view.
2. Too soon for redistribution of economic power - this from a Communist.
3. Article 23 legislation hasn't been passed - mostly because at least 500,000 people found the last attempt too odious for words.
4. No law governing political parties - because there hasn't been a need for one.
5. Equal participation in politics not yet achieved - he doesn't mean by women, he means by various interest groups. This is despite Hong Kong's "rotten borough" system of special interest groups having their own seats in Legco and a veto over legislation.
6. Not enough patriotic education, something well covered previously by Dave.

But wait, there's more:

Another speaker, Basic Law drafter Xu Chongde , said universal suffrage could be implemented only when it could be guaranteed that patriots would be selected to be the political leaders.

"If anyone today could ensure that the [chief executive] selected through universal suffrage is a patriot, then I would suggest introducing universal suffrage today."

Professor Xu said the Democratic Party was misleading Hong Kong people through "blind worship of universal suffrage", which was "just one kind of democracy".

Hong Kong can have universal suffrage, as long as it picks the right person. Again, this completely defeats the point of giving people the vote. As for the blind worship of universal suffrage and being only one kind of democracy, it's not like the people of Hong Kong have had many alternatives. Which is exactly the point.

A black Model T, anyone?

 posted by Simon on 04.29.06 at 04:25 PM in the Hong Kong democracy/politics category.




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Comments:

perhaps a shot of the most advanced anti-biotic needed for these drooling "professors"
-- in cantonese, the adjective is called "flower-willow infected his brain". :)

 posted by: sun bin on 04.29.06 at 05:11 PM [permalink]

Go watch Election 2 for a very depressing take on this debate. Especially the ending... I hope what it implies is not true at all, but sadly we all know HK is without hope here.

 posted by: spacehunt on 05.02.06 at 03:41 AM [permalink]

I need to see both Election movies - I hear they are great, although the second isn't as good as the first, as usual.

 posted by: Simon on 05.02.06 at 08:02 AM [permalink]

I feel bound to point out that that business with the Ford Model T is actually an urban myth.

 posted by: Argleblaster on 05.02.06 at 09:50 PM [permalink]




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