HONG KONG — Lawmakers on Thursday rejected a proposal to change how Hong Kong chooses its top official, voting down a Beijing-backed plan that set off huge street protests last year.
The plan would have allowed Hong Kong’s five million eligible voters to vote for the territory’s chief executive from a selection of two or three candidates, starting in 2017. The measure needed the support of at least two-thirds of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council to pass, and it failed to meet that mark, with 28 of the body’s 70 members voting no.
Opponents of the measure, many of whom took part in the protests last year, argued that the restrictions China’s legislature imposed on who could appear on the ballot would have left voters with no real choice. Nominees would have been vetted by a committee of about 1,200 people dominated by loyalists to the Communist-run government in Beijing, ensuring that only people acceptable to the Chinese government could appear on the ballot.
“Let us show the world that we are not fools,” Claudia Mo, a Hong Kong lawmaker, told her colleagues during the televised debate. “If you want to be true to the words democracy and universal suffrage, ladies and gentlemen, all Hong Kongers, we have no option but to vote against it.”
But the result Thursday was a bitter victory at best for Ms. Mo and the other lawmakers known as pan-democrats. Last year, as China prepared to issue its election proposal, they had hoped that the mere threat of vast sit-in demonstrations would persuade Beijing to set out more generous rules for Hong Kong’s elections, ones that might allow a member of their coalition to appear on the ballot for chief executive.
Instead, the Chinese legislature issued strict guidelines in August that led to protests bigger than anyone had expected. The demonstrations only mushroomed after the police tried to quell them with tear gas, and the protesters occupied parts of the city for months, blocking several key thoroughfares.
Supporters of the election proposal, including Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, argued that it was a huge improvement over the current system, under which Mr. Leung and his predecessors were chosen by that same 1,200-person committee, minus the public vote. Supporters also argued that the plan could be improved in the future, and therefore should be adopted now.
“For Hong Kong’s democratic development, for the right to vote of five million eligible voters, for the benefit and well-being of the Hong Kong people, I once again urge every member of the Legislative Council to support the proposal with your sacred vote,” Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s No. 2 official and the leader of the push to adopt the election plan, told lawmakers.
Hong Kong is part of China but was allowed to retain a great deal of autonomy, including an independent legal system and robust civil liberties, as part of an agreement with Britain that led to the former colony’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
During the colonial era, London appointed Hong Kong’s governor. But under the mini-constitution that will govern the territory until at least 2047, Beijing pledged to allow Hong Kong’s people to vote for the chief executive through universal suffrage “upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.”
That was supposed to happen in 2017. But with lawmakers having rejected the government’s plan, the earliest that the public could vote for their leader will now be 2022, and only after a lengthy process involving consultations with people in Hong Kong and new guidelines issued by the Chinese legislature.
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