The Pulse：Occupy Central Narrows the Field; District Councils "Promote" Constitutional Reform

9-5-2014

On Tuesday, Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) held its third "Constitutional Reform Deliberation Day". Around 2,500 participants voted for their preferred Chief Executive electoral proposal at polling booths in five different districts of Hong Kong. There were 15 proposals, all satisfying international standards on universal and equal suffrage, from which they could choose. Hong Kong permanent residents will be able to vote for the three shortlisted proposals on the "Civil Referendum Day" on 22 June. The selected proposal will be submitted to the Hong Kong government. But there have been criticism sthat the process has pre-empted that vote, with the more moderate proposals being voted out at the expense of more extreme ones.

Well with us in the studio are Benny Tai of Occupy Central, and Michael Davis, who submitted one of those perhaps more moderate proposals.

In societies that get to fully elect their government there's always a bit of a conundrum when the government spends public money to convince the public of a viewpoint it might not share. It gets even more confusing when this activity occurs in the process of a consultation supposedly to assess public views. Hong Kong's government allocated a total of HKS4.5 million in public money to district councils to promote the idea that proposals for electoral reform should follow the Basic Law, but do the public's representatives have a right to help determine how that money was spent?