The current Legislative Council (LegCo) elections were supposed to take place last Sunday. In a parallel universe where there are no brutal interventions, we would have known whether the democratic camp has accomplished its goal of 35+ majority. However, the government seems to look forward to “laam caau” (mutually-assured destruction) more than the Hong Kong people and downright canceled the election, bringing Hong Kong to a path with an unknown future.

Reminiscing about discussing election politics with students ten years ago, as a rule, we would restate the internationally recognized definition of fair elections that are characterized by “real competition, security, secrecy and periodically.” When I gave this lecture a decade ago, the subject of “competition” was generally just lightly touched upon, pointing out that the chief executive candidates selected by the election committee are not truly diverse even if a democratic representative marginally succeeded in passing the screening. I would typically only take some examples of underdeveloped countries that were divided by warlords to illustrate the remaining definition issues, and the process would take no more than 10 minutes. The various unfair elections that Hong Kong is facing today previously only existed in textbooks.

In the past ten years, the “election fairness lecture” has gradually moved out of the classroom into reality. First, the issue of the candidate’s political position has been made very clear by the returning officer’s frequent disqualification of candidates. On the one hand, the returning officer scrutinizes every single remark made by the candidates in the past. On the other hand, we often see senior government officials and police spokespersons speak indiscriminately, making inconsistent public statements. Putting the two together, anyone with a logical mind will know that those inquiries about candidates are just a formality. This government has never been so strict in public speaking, it merely served as an excuse to achieve the purpose of political censorship predetermined long ago.

Even if the candidates do successfully make it through, they still face an unfair election environment. Mainstream media have their respective favorites and it is difficult for the underdogs to stand out. The election committee’s supervision of campaign expenditures is also fictitious. The pro-Beijing camp can deploy a huge amount of campaign spending from gray areas while ordinary candidates can only watch from afar. For these reasons, “political competition” is becoming more and more virtual.

Then there is election security. In the District Council elections last year, a number of pro-democracy candidates were attacked on the street. Among them, Jimmy Sham, the Sha Tin District Councillor of Lek Yuen constituency, was ambushed and smashed in the head with metal hammers. Recalling in 2016, Ken Chow Wing-kan who was running for a LegCo seat in New Territories West abruptly dropped out of the poll race as he alleged to have been threatened by Beijing and claimed to have written a will out of fear for his safety. Previously when I explained to students about election safety, I would use “warlords harassing voters on the way to the polling stations” as a conjecture example. Unfortunately, this example is no longer necessary. In reality, the Hong Kong elections are already very unsafe.

Originally, I was most confident about the secrecy of ballots in Hong Kong elections. After all, the entire Hong Kong knows it is absolutely forbidden to take photos inside polling stations and votes are cast in complete secrecy. Despite rumors in every election that voters are forced to support candidates of a certain faction, all walks of life very quickly clarified that in reality, it is very easy to go around these pressures. For example, if a voter is coerced into taking photos of the stamped ballot, he or she can chop several more stamps to void the ballot. However, with the government promoting the study of absentee voting, I no longer have much faith in whether votes can be done in secrecy. At the end of the day, there are still many pairs of eyes in Hong Kong to supervise the voting process but there will be no guarantee that if the environment is changed.

Lastly is the concept of periodically which I would have never believed could be shaken ten years ago. No matter how terrible you think the Hong Kong government is, the work style of civil servants can still be trusted considering that their jobs are at stake. The election schedule is clearly stipulated, so one only needs to follow it, and there should be no room for discussion. The first warning sign was that the schedules of multiple by-elections in the past four years were obviously unregulated, which are different from the earlier arrangements (such as the two by-elections in 2000 and 2007). However, these tricks were done discreetly at the time. In comparison, the one-year delay of the LegCo election claimed to be due to the epidemic is a complete disregard for the provisions of the Basic Law on the term of LegCo office.

Many people have talked about the various issues of canceling elections and how to continue elections under the epidemic. While universal testing, which claims to have been registered by more than one million people, can proceed, holding elections on the contrary is too dangerous. This is obviously unreasonable. What worries me the most is that many people still agree with the government’s approach.

According to a survey published by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, 68% of the people think that the LegCo election should be held right away while 27% think otherwise. However, in terms of political factions, as many as 55% of the non-democrat supporters believe that elections should not be resumed as soon as possible. The survey failed to ask the reasons for their objection, so it is unknown whether it is because they are afraid of the recurrence of the epidemic or because they feel that there is no need for further discussion when it has been decided by the central government. If the reason is the former, then we still have a little room for discussion; if it is the latter, we seem to forget that the forming of the LegCo by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress has nothing to do with Hong Kong people. Election fairness has crumbled this far and to have to continue to blindly follow orders and accept all commands are no different from kneeling to eat. As a person, one should maintain that last bit of dignity.

(Leung Kai-chi is a current affairs commentator)

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