Electing Hong Kong's Chief Executive

5 - System for Electing the Chief Executive

5 System for Electing the Chief Executive 1 Introduction This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the legal and operational dimensions of the prevailing system for electing the CE in the HKSAR. We focus on the system in place arising out of the establishment of the 2006 EC. The operation of the ECs preceding the 2006 EC — and the pre-HKSAR Selection Committee — are dealt with in Chapter 2. We begin by considering the significance of being a member of the EC. Next, we provide a synoptic profile of the membership of the 2006 EC. We also look at the eligibility rules for the CE and discuss the methods for choosing the CE. Following this, we look at what one needs to do to be nominated as a valid candidate to stand in a CE election. We then review the voting regime applying in the CE election itself. The penultimate part of the chapter discusses the way in which the political landscape for CE elections has changed quite dramatically since 1997 — despite the lack, thus far, of any serious reform of the fundamental structure of the current, “small circle” CE election system. Some concluding remarks are made in the final part of the chapter. 2 Significance of Election Committee Membership As we have explained in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, the political legacy of British rule in Hong Kong was an 18th century governance model, modified over time by a range of formal and informal enhancements. By the time of the handover in 1997, the practical result was a city-state which combined a very high level of civic freedom with a still remarkably constrained political system and a comparatively clean and efficient system of highly bureaucratic government. By most measures the most troubling, dated, political structure features which were a product of this legacy and which are built into the Basic Law are the functional constituency (FC) system and the EC system. The EC system lacked real political legitimacy from the time of its inclusion in the Basic Law. In operation, the EC system 78 Electing Hong Kong’s Chief Executive has done little to remedy its clear shortcomings. The EC system has now ceased to be relevant as a component in LegCo elections (see Chapter 3). The FCs, meanwhile, continue to project a distorted-democracy image of the HKSAR to the rest of the world. The FC system is, by design, intrinsically hostile to the notion of universal suffrage. The EC system remains, however, of vital political importance. Currently the EC exercises real and significant political power in two key ways. First, there is the nominating role: anyone who wishes to present themselves as a candidate in a CE election must (under current rules) obtain nominations from a minimum of 100 of the 800 EC members.1 Next, there is the electing role: the EC, alone, casts the votes which elect the CE.2 The CE wields a great deal of power under the Basic Law.3 It is reasonable to expect that reforms leading to a CE elected using a system based on universal suffrage may emerge by 2017 as discussed earlier in Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Until then, however, the EC will remain pivotal in choosing Hong Kong’s most powerful political figure. As explained in Chapter 4, it is not expected that the EC will be dramatically reformed prior to the 2012 CE election — so it is fair to assume the sort of power wielded by the current EC will not be greatly diluted prior to 2017, at the earliest. Moreover, there is a widespread expectation that, assuming some universal suffrage mode for electing the CE can be agreed upon, it is likely that the EC will be retained in some form to perform a nominating role.4 As we saw in Chapter 3, the voting system for HKSAR NPC deputies, like that for the CE, is heavily controlled through a separate, ad hoc, electoral-college system. Thus far, there is no discussion about any reforms designed to move towards universal suffrage for these HKSAR-NPC elections, or even to enlarge significantly the pool of voters in this “small circle” election system. This is, perhaps, hardly surprising: unlike in the case of internal HKSAR elections, the Basic Law is silent on possible reform of these NPC elections. Indeed the Basic Law states, inArticle 21 that the NPC both assigns the number of NPC seats applicable to the HKSAR and specifies the selection method for...