China’s rubber-stamp parliament to rubber stamp poll reform Thursday: pro-Beijing delegate
China’s annual meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament is likely to vote on a major overhaul to Hong Kong electoral system on Thursday, pro-Beijing heavyweight Tam Yiu-chung said on Monday, in spite of the fact that no details of the proposal have been made public.
Speculation about the likely shape of the political overhaul — widely viewed as yet another major move by Beijing to dismantle the former British colony’s autonomy and suppress dissent — has been growing since the city’s government postponed elections due on Sept. 6, 2020, for at least a year.
The delay was made following the landslide victory won by the city’s pro-democracy bloc in a community-level election in November 2019, as months-long anti-government protests engulfed the international financial hub.
The shake-up has been deemed by many critics as a way to eradicate the remaining and once-tolerated dissenting voices in Hong Kong’s establishment, blocking the means for democracy supporters from holding public offices. It is also a response to the recent emphasis from the central authorities in Beijing on “patriots administering Hong Kong.”
Although the National People’s Congress entered a breakout session to discuss the draft bill on Monday, no details regarding the proposal have been revealed by the authorities.
It won’t be the first bill affecting Hong Kong to be passed with no details released beforehand. Last year, Beijing imposed the national security law on the city before any of its clauses had been made public. The law, which essentially criminalizes opposition voices, later resulted in more than 100 arrests of pro-democracy activists.
Vice Premier Han Zheng, who is in charge of Hong Kong and Macao affairs “met a lot of people” on Sunday, and many of them agreed that Hong Kong should be run by people patriotic to China, Tam told a radio show on Monday when asked how Hongkongers’ thoughts were included in the overhaul.
“Following the improvement, we will go back to the right path, a healthier track, so that we can eventually achieve universal suffrage as promised in Articles 45 and 68 of the Basic Law,” the 71-year-old Tam said.
The overhaul was decided in view of the impacts done to “one country, two systems” between 2003 and 2019, the member of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee reaffirmed, accusing foreign powers of influencing Hong Kong’s decades-long pro-democracy protests and attempting to subvert the state power.
“The central government needs a higher safety factor [from Hong Kong],” he said, adding that now Beijing is feeling that Hong Kong is being “made use of” by other forces.
However, former chairperson of the Democracy Party Emily Lau countered Tam’s arguments, saying that the reform was Beijing’s attempt to place a tighter grip over Hong Kong and would get Hong Kong “into a mess.”
The Europen Union has earlier warned Beijing to tread carefully on the electoral reform and consider the “political and economic implications” it may arise, saying it was “ready to take additional steps in response to any further serious deterioration” of the city’s political freedoms and human rights.
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