Opinions at extremes …

Surveyed some IT voters. Here sampled two typical answers from voters about the need, or otherwise, of “democracy” in HK.

1. HK is under the rule of China. We need a Chief Executive who is able to bridge between China and HK, win the trust of the Chinese government, strategically position HK to integrate into our motherland’s economic system. Remember China has the highest growth among the world’s big nations. This is the only way to go for a better HK. The Chinese government does not trust candidates other than those they picked, so it is not to the benefit of HK to go for a contested CE election.

2. The current system is not democracy. It is only intended for control of the political environment of HK. But there are severe externalities due to this constitutional setup: There are only 800 Election Committee members, with a large portion of them uncontested or “coordinated” or only with very few candidates. Voters are also limited to those 200K out of the 7M. The consequence is this setup can be manipulated, that creates incentives for use of the power of this committee to lobby for formulation of government policies, regulations and licensing on various aspects affecting HK: land, labour policy, electricity supply, education, transport, etc … all aspects affecting all HK people. These “externalities” are things the Chinese government do not want, naturally.

Any answer to these? You may leave a comment …