Hong Kong’s Stage-Managed Election Is Fooling Nobody
The trappings of democracy are important to an authoritarian system. Getting people to go to the polls may be the biggest challenge.
No banners, no noise this time.
Photographer: Philip Fong/AFP/Getty
Arrangements for Hong Kong’s first legislative election under a revamped system are leaving little to chance. There must be competition — but not too much, and of the right kind. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption agency has warned against calls to cast blank ballots or abstain from voting — two of the few ways left for people to register disapproval of a Beijing-designed process from which political opposition has been excluded.
It’s been a slow start. As of Nov. 3, five days after nominations opened, only 48 had been received for the 90 seats in the Legislative Council. The nomination period runs until Friday. Chinese officials stationed in the city have expressed frustration over the lack of energy on display, according to accounts in local media. “No banners, no noise” read one headline in the South China Morning Post, a contrast to the months of vigorous street campaigning that characterized earlier, open elections.