Support Erodes for Opposition in Hong Kong Vote

HONG KONG —  The Democratic Party suffered a major erosion of public support in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections Sunday, while a party with close ties to Beijing gained strength, according to early election results and exit polls.

The result of the second council election since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule three years ago came amid sharply reduced voter turnout and broad public discontent about the failure to recover the levels of prosperity that predated the region’s 1998 recession.

These factors, coupled with an easing of worries about political meddling from Beijing into Hong Kong’s political affairs, combined to hurt the territory’s largest political party, analysts said.

Under Hong Kong’s complex post-colonial political system, which is committed to a gradual transition to full democracy, less than half the council members are chosen directly by the general population, meaning that voters could in effect elect only the opposition, not the government.

“Free but not yet democratic” was the verdict on the balloting from political analyst Robert Broadfoot, managing director of Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, a locally based group that studies regional issues.

Neither the territory’s chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, nor his government faced the prospect of losing power in the voting, although a strong showing by the Democrats would have embarrassed Tung, complicated his ability to govern and heightened prospects that Beijing might have to approve a new candidate for the job in 2002, when Tung’s term is due to expire.

As vote-counting continued this morning, the Democrats’ share appeared to have sunk to 36% from the more than 43% it polled two years ago in Hong Kong’s first legislative election under Chinese sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the large, pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, lifted its share of the vote by about 5 percentage points to around 30%.

Analysts cited Beijing’s generally hands-off stance toward Hong Kong in the three years since the former British colony returned to Chinese sovereignty as one key reason for an erosion of support for the Democrats. Ironically, Beijing’s one intervention--last year, to restrict the flow of immigrants into Hong Kong--was viewed with relief by most residents here.

The Democrats’ decision to oppose Beijing’s stance hurt them in the polls, analysts said. Still, Sunday’s results remained surprising because the Democrats failed to capitalize on a scandal involving a top official of the pro-Beijing party or on Tung’s growing unpopularity.

“We thought the scandal and Tung’s mistakes had changed the landscape, but it didn’t happen that way,” said Ivan Choy, a prominent social scientist at Hong Kong’s City University. “It’s a setback for the Democrats.”

A sharp reduction in voter turnout from an all-time high of 53% in 1998 also seemed to have hurt the Democrats. Apparently as a result of both voter apathy and general dissatisfaction with the Legislative Council’s inability to influence events, Sunday’s turnout dropped to just over 40%.

Two years ago, in the territory’s first post-colonial elections, residents braved heavy rains and floods to vote in record numbers, in part to demonstrate to Beijing that they cared about democracy.

As part of Hong Kong’s move toward democracy, the number of directly elected seats in the 60-member council has risen from 20 two years ago to 24. Half the members are elected by professional or corporate groups, while six are chosen by a small election committee.

Despite the comparatively low turnout and the strong mood of voter discontent, analysts saw several hopeful signs Sunday for Hong Kong’s democratic experiment, which is unfolding within China under a formula known as “one country, two systems.”

They noted that the threat of political interference from Beijing has faded as an issue, the number of directly elected seats in the legislature has increased, and, for the first time, the performance of Hong Kong’s ruling executive has become a legitimate and central issue for debate. While recent polls have shown that popular opinion of Tung’s tenure is largely negative, even that is progress, analysts claimed.

“It’s another move toward ‘normal’ politics in which such judgments by the people are a routine part of democratic life,” noted Michael DeGolyer, a respected academic who tracks public attitudes in Hong Kong.

And if diversity is any sign of maturity, Hong’s Kong’s evolving democracy definitely had a good day.

In one constituency, a local soap opera actor faced off against a leftist activist whose election day attire included a Che Guevara T-shirt. Exit polls showed the activist, Leung Kwok-hung, with a strong chance of winning a seat.

A lawyer named Paul Tse, who ran as an independent, also enlivened the campaign by dressing in a pink satin Superman suit sporting the Chinese character for “law” instead of the famous “S.”

“I don’t belong to a major party, so I’ve had to do something different to get noticed,” Tse said. “Once they realize what I stand for, they will know I’m serious.”

Tse was even philosophical about his apparent failure to win election.

“Anyone who participates in democracy is a winner,” he said.