ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 397 (OUTLAW PRIMARY EDITION)
Hong Kong had its first - and possibly last - primary election over the weekend.
To explain briefly:
HK doesn't normally have primaries in the same manner as the US. But the pan-Democratic parties (which are legion) have never held a collective majority in in the Legislative Council (LegCo) - in part because the parties keep splitting into smaller factions, which ends up splitting the vote to the point where pro-Beijing parties tend to win.
So the pan-Demo organization People For Democracy organized a primary election to help the various parties work out which pan-Demo candidates have the best chance of winning and then back those candidates in the General Election in September. The Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) - an offshoot of HK University which conducts public opinion polls - is collecting the data and tallying votes.
Another reason for doing this is that most pan-Demos are pretty sure that the upcoming LegCo election is their last chance to win a majority, not least because the govt has been looking for every excuse they can (often linked to last year’s protests) to disqualify pan-Demo candidates to ensure they don't win a majority.
Indeed, even though the primary is not against election rules, various HK govt officials (including, of course, Carrie Lam) have naturally said that all of this could potentially violate the new National Security Law. Their reasons? (1) it's cheating for the pan-Demos to figure out in advance which of their candidates have the best chance of winning and (2) it's a violation of the national security law for opposition parties who oppose govt policies to win a majority because opposing the govt is sedition. On the other hand, if the opposition parties agree to support everything the govt proposes, then that's perfectly legal. See?
[Additional note: these are the kind of arguments you get from people who have no idea how something works but think they do.]
It’s also notable that the night before the election, police raided PORI and seized some of their computers - supposedly for something unrelated to the election. Luckily, they didn’t take the computers with the election data on them.
Anyway, I voted. I don't think I'll go to jail for it, if only because 610,000 people voted. So I don’t think they have the capacity to arrest that many people at once. More than likely they’ll arrest the organizers if they decide to arrest anyone.
So, a brief Q&A:
1. Is 610,000 a good number?
Yes, in the sense that the PFD was expecting 170,000. Every one of those are verified voters.
2. Will it actually help the pan-Demos win a majority?
No idea, but it’s unlikely, if only because I fully expect the HK govt to arrest and/or disqualify the candidates who won the primary (all of whom, as it happens, are the younger and more blatantly anti-Beijing candidates rather than the moderate Establishment pan-Demos).
Also, it depends on whether the various pan-Demo factions really can unite behind a candidate that may not tick all their ideological boxes. (For the Americans, it’s kind of like convincing Sanders supporters to vote for Joe Biden.)
3. Could the govt just cancel the elections?
They could, though legally it’s tricky, and they’re trying to pass themselves off to the international community (especially investors) as a reasonable regime that totally believes in freedom and democracy despite beating up, tear-gassing and arresting people for advocating just that. So I think they’ll settle for rigging it in their favour.
4. Isn't the fact that they didn't send the police out to stop the primary a good sign?
Not really. As I said, the HK govt is desperately selling the narrative that the NSL all about freedom and democracy and the NSL was only necessary because a tiny group of violent separatist terrorists (trained and funded by mysterious foreign agencies) were trying to overthrow China by firebombing the streets of Hong Kong and sticking Post-it Notes all over the place. Beating the crap out of decidedly non-violent people who support (currently) legal political parties who are clearly not doing anything technically illegal creates the kind of optics that make that narrative a tough sell.
Yes, so does banning slogans, prohibiting schoolchildren from singing that song, yanking books off library shelves and arresting kids for silently waving blank placards. But then I never said their arguments make sense, and HK/BJ either don’t know or care that they don’t - their defense of the NSL, police brutality and censorship is essentially one big gaslighting exercise, and they seem convinced that if they repeat it enough times (despite all evidence to the contrary) the rest of the world will have no choice but to believe them. I mean, these are the same people who said that the press will have 100% press freedom under the NSL as long as they don’t write anything that violates the NSL.
Anyway, as I say, they’ll settle for arresting the organizers (likely starting with Benny Tai, who they absolutely hate) and disqualifying candidates.
Developing …
You choose, you lose,
This is dF
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