Hong Kong Chief Executive Speaks for Leaders Worldwide: You Can't Have Open Elections Because Then Poor People Will Have Power

Yesterday government officials in Hong Kong debated leaders of the Umbrella Movement on television, something that would never happen in the United States, and something which did not happen during the Occupy Wall Street protests of autumn 2011. Then protesters were dismissed as infantile Utopians who were unreasonable for not articulating a list of demands that could be conveniently translated into the political/legislative process. At the same time, Obama and the Democrats appropriated the main Occupy argument about income inequality, which carried them to an impressive victory over Romney and the GOP in 2012.

Reuters has a handy story about the TV debate, "Hong Kong students put their case to government, but no breakthrough":

Communist Party rulers in Beijing in August offered Hong Kong people the chance to vote for their own leader in 2017, but said only two to three candidates could run after getting majority backing from a 1,200-person nominating committee, which is widely expected to be stacked with Beijing loyalists. 

The protesters decry this as "fake" Chinese-style democracy and say they won't leave the streets unless Beijing allows open nominations. 

"We hope the Hong Kong government doesn't become an obstacle on the democratic road for Hong Kong people," [student leader Alex] Chow added. "But that it will help us dismantle these road blocks and to lead Hong Kong people to bring about true democratic reform." 

[Chief Secretary Carrie] Lam reiterated the government's position that open nominations were not possible under Hong Kong law. 

"The students' voices and demands have been clearly heard by the special administrative region government, Hong Kong society and the central government," said Lam, seated on one side of a U-shaped table with four colleagues facing an equal number student leaders wearing black t-shirts. 

"But no matter how high the ideals, they must be strived for through legal, appropriate and rational means." 

The unprecedented open debate on democracy, that put protesters on an equal footing with Hong Kong officials who have branded their acts illegal, reflected a shift in the government's approach to engage rather than shun a movement that has lasted beyond most people's expectations.

Chief Secretary Lam was careful to note that no other nominating process exists in the Basic Law other than by nominating committee. The students of the Umbrella Movement want to abolish the constituent groups that are represented in the Hong Kong legislature and make up the nominating committee. As Michael Forsythe and Alan Wong report in "On TV, Hong Kong Openly Debates Democracy":

The students and other protesters want a more open nomination process as well as the abolition of so-called functional constituencies, which are industry, professional and social groups that are represented in Hong Kong’s legislature and in the committee that currently picks the chief executive. 

The government has rejected or ignored all of the students’ demands, except for their request to talk.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, made clear on Monday that the government would only listen to what the students had to say and explain to them how Hong Kong’s political process works. The territory has a great deal of autonomy from Beijing, and its people enjoy a broad range of civil liberties that mainland Chinese lack, including freedom of speech and assembly.

If the Umbrella Movement, seeking a more popularly democratic way to elect the chief executive of Hong Kong, dismisses the pre-selection of two or three candidates by a rigged nominating committee as a "fake," then the democracy of "the greatest nation on Earth," a.k.a., the United States is also a "fake," which it of course is.

Speaking for all plutocrats worldwide Hong Kong's top official Leung Chun-ying laid it shockingly bare the other day (which surprisingly received little comment, really no comment that I saw): that a government cannot have truly popular, wide-open nominations because then the poor will have a majority voice and they might vote themselves a welfare state. The amazing story by Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley,"Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections," appeared yesterday:

HONG KONG — The Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said Monday evening that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. 

Mr. Leung made the statement during a broad-ranging defense of his administration’s handling of pro-democracy protests that have disrupted the city for more than three weeks. 

In an interview with a small group of journalists from American and European news media organizations, his first with foreign media since the city erupted in demonstrations, he acknowledged that many of the protesters are angry over the lack of social mobility and affordable housing in the city. But he argued that containing populist pressures was an important reason for resisting the protesters’ demands for fully open elections. 

Instead, he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead. Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive of Hong Kong, supports Beijing’s lead role in screening the region’s future leaders.  

Mr. Leung’s blunt remarks reflect a widely held view among the Hong Kong elite [and elite world over] that the general public cannot be trusted to govern the city well. His statements appeared likely to draw fresh criticism from the democratic opposition, and to inflame the street struggle over Hong Kong’s political future.

***

Mr. Leung said that if “you look at the meaning of the words ‘broadly representative,’ it’s not numeric representation.” 

“You have to take care of all the sectors in Hong Kong as much as you can,” he said, “and if it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” 

“Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies,” he continued.

The philosophy C.Y. is espousing is of course the American way of thinking, so American it is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers were as paranoid -- if not more so -- with popular democracy as they were with monarchy or oligarchy.

So for the Gray Lady to continue to favorably spotlight the young protesters of the Umbrella Movement who are trying to implement a form of democracy that the owners and editors of the paper clearly do not support, which is to say a broadly egalitarian system, one has to note the glaring display of bad faith. This then lends weight to the notion that U.S. mainstream advocacy of the Umbrella Revolution -- something that would never be tolerated in the homeland; look at Ferguson: protesters were not allowed to stand still let alone sit down -- is part of a Color Revolution scheme "Pivot to Asia."

After what happened in Kiev last February, no wonder Beijing is paranoid.