Former chief secretary of Hong Kong, Anson Chan, tells Stefania Palma about the difficulties facing pan-democratic parties in Hong Kong, and defends the city-state's political protesters, saying that universal suffrage is long overdue.

“Having served in the civil service for 40 years, I have a particular interest in governance issues. And I don’t like what I’m seeing," says Anson Chan, with the same gumption and dedication that has embodied her long involvement in Hong Kong politics.

In her current position, as the head of pro-democracy political group Hong Kong 2020, Ms Anson says that she has found it hard to engage in dialogue with the Hong Kong government. The first stage of consultation on the rigid yet – in her opinion – malleable National People’s Congress Standing Committee's framework for the 2017 election of Hong Kong's chief executive has been a “sham”, she says.

Sustaining pan-democratic parties to run in the elections has also become arduous. “The pan-democrats find it extremely difficult to get financial support, which limits possibilities of networking and attracting better people to join the party. Now the pro-Beijing parties have no problem. They have so much money that it’s coming out of their ears,” says Ms Chan.

Democratic transition

Ms Chan is keen on seeing change at a constitutional level: as it stands, Hong Kong's chief executive is elected by just 800 members of an 'election committee', which is drawn from roughly 7% of the voting population. “When you don’t have a popular mandate, it is difficult for the government to get its programmes through the legislature, which increasingly sees itself as being in the opposition,” she says.

It is an issue that has come to the fore as political protests in Hong Kong have escalated since mid-September. Demonstrators have been denouncing Hong Kong's current chief executive, CY Leung, both for his failure to address the shortcomings of the ‘one country two systems’ framework – which is the constitutional principle binding China and Hong Kong – and for not entering into a conversation with protesters.

In Ms Chan’s view, the protests also signify the Hong Kong population's uncertainty over whether they can maintain their core values and autonomy under the ‘one country two systems’ framework, which was adopted when the city-state was handed over by the UK to China in 1997. Mr Leung’s seeming disengagement on these matters has exacerbated frustration, she says. “We have a chief executive who does not share our core values, who does not think it is his main responsibility to defend two systems, the rule of law and protect our rights and freedoms.”

Some have argued that the Hong Kong population's demands for genuine democratic elections are unjustified, since they were never granted such rights under UK rule.

But Ms Chan points out that the UK had already started a democratic transition, to China’s displeasure. “They are forgetting that, during the reign of [the UK], Beijing said it would never tolerate democratic elections, for fear that Hong Kong could then demand independence. When I was in government [as Hong Kong's chief secretary] I knew that the UK's political imperative [was blocked by] Beijing’s opposition to universal suffrage,” she says.

Bending the rules

Although not enacting democracy, Ms Chan says that British rulers never evoked the same threats among Hong Kong people that China does now. “The UK, being a parliamentary democracy, [has] a bottom line beyond which it won’t go. But we are now part of a country that is, to a large extent, still totalitarian, with an iron fist, one-party system rule. The culture and values are very different,” she says.

For this reason, Ms Chan believes that it is hard to criticise Hong Kong residents for their growing concerns. “People’s aspirations, people’s expectations change. You cannot blame the Hong Kong people for feeling that the only way forward is to exercise choice in selecting our chief executive, when we see both signatories [the UK and China] to the joint declaration walking away from their promises,” she says.

Though debate over the interpretation of Hong Kong’s law is vast, Ms Chan argues that full democracy, though arguably not promised in the joint declaration, is definitely outlined in the Basic Law and in its Standing Committee interpretation.

“If you read the Basic Law, we were supposed to have a high degree of autonomy, even in constitutional reforms and in deciding how fast to move to universal suffrage. That [was passed over] when, in 2004 and 2007, the Standing Committee decided to interpret our Basic Law and hand down decisions to put off the day for genuine universal suffrage until 2017 at the earliest,” says Ms Chan.

“All we are asking is for Beijing to deliver on the promises it made to us: universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive in 2017 and universal suffrage for electing all members of the legislature in 2020. One man, one vote is totally meaningless if you hand us two or three puppets to choose from.”

Anson Chan is the head of pro-democracy group Hong Kong 2020.

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