Legco elections hold local lessons

On Sept. 10, Hong Kong held its second Legislative Council (Legco) election since its handover to China in 1997. The Democratic Party (民主黨) saw its share of votes decline by 8 percent, even though it remains the majority party in the Legco. Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB, 民建聯), arguably a peripheral organization of the Chinese Communist Party -- saw its share of votes increase despite scandals surrounding its former vice chairman Gary Cheng (程介南). The DAB won only one seat less than the Democratic Party. Gary Cheng was also elected.

The third largest party is the pro-business Liberal Party, which also favors Beijing.

Among the Legco's 60 seats, the number of directly elected seats was increased to 24, but that did not help the Democratic Party in any way. The Democratic Party now has only 18 seats -- not enough to assert any meaningful influence. It has been reviewing the reasons why the results turned out to its disadvantage. Similar issues are also likely to emerge in Taiwan if it were to unite with China.

Under Chinese rule, the operational costs of the Democratic Party can only come from small private donations and portions of salaries given by their legislators. They are not allowed to contact foreign organizations or receive financial support from them.

That makes it difficult for the party to sponsor campaign activities or promote itself. In contrast, the DAB gets massive donations from Hong Kong conglomerates and Chinese businesses. The money enables them to host numerous large-scale events, curry favor with voters and expand their power base. They also have enough money to spend on election campaigns. In contrast, the democrats are still depending on anti-Beijing sentiment left over from the Tiananmen Massacre and are not actively expanding their voter base.

The Beijing and SAR governments basically give the democrats a wide berth, while taking great pains to nurture the DAB and other parties of its ilk. For example, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) often attends their activities to help increase their publicity. The DAB is also given priority whenever there is any opportunity for "good work" coming from Beijing. The situation can be compared to Taiwan -- where Beijing refuses to talk to Taiwan's semi-official Strait Exchange Foundation but opts instead to schmooze with the New Party's Elmer Feng (馮滬祥).

As a result, in the eyes of the people of Hong Kong, the DAB appears to be the only party capable of working for them.

The media environment has also changed since the handover. Not surprisingly, Beijing's mouthpieces have remained in their same old ruts. But the private-run media has also cut or sidelined their coverage of the democrats, either because the media bosses are investing in China or cooperating with Chinese busi-nesses, or because rubbing Beijing the wrong way might hurt their advertising income.

Conversely, pro-communist groups are gaining more media coverage. Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee (李柱銘) suffered a media backlash after he criticized two local TV stations about their lop-sided coverage.

After the Gary Cheng scandal broke in the Apple Daily (蘋果日報), some media organizations turned their guns on the Democratic Party and started a mud-slinging war. The accusations, most of which are either totally groundless or rehashings of previous trifles, are aimed at the "group of thugs opposing China and creating chaos in Hong Kong." Such browbeating looks more like deliberate attacks on democrats than media competition. Beijing's media mouthpieces also tirelessly carried the accusations.