When Hong Kong voters go to the polls next week they will face a complex system riddled with quirks, one of which is that only half of the seats in the legislature are actually chosen by direct vote.
Power can never truly be said to be in the hands of the people, as the remaining half of the 60 seats traditionally go to pro-Beijing candidates hand-picked by members of the business community.
The process here baffles even political scientists who study elections.
"It's extremely convoluted. While some other countries may combine more than one type of voting, none combine varying types of franchise," said Michael DeGolyer, director of the Hong Kong Transition Project, which has worked to analyze the direction of political development.
Based on a proportional representation system, voters in the five directly elected geographical constituencies here do not choose individual candidates, but blocs representing various parties or factions.
According to the proportion of ballots cast in their name, parties will be allocated seats in LegCo. Depending on how many seats each party receives, they will appoint members of their party from the published list.
In Kowloon East, for example, with its 524,000 registered voters and five LegCo seats, the minimum for a party to get a seat would be 104,800 assuming everyone voted, as it is calculated by the total number of votes cast divided by the number of available seats.
If not all seats were filled by parties satisfying the minimum quota, then of the remaining parties, those with the most total votes fill the vacancies.
Geographical constituencies are calculated on a ratio of approximately one seat per 100,000 people.
This all leads to unusual campaign flyers like Democratic Party lawmaker Yeung Sum's. It has the normal blurb, but he is pictured with two colleagues and his appeal for voters' ticks asks not that they back him, but instead pick a "list" of candidates.
However, it is the fact that only half of LegCo is selected in this way that remains the system's most unusual aspect. The remaining 30 seats go to so-called "functional constituencies," which operate on a first-past-the-post electoral system, purportedly designed to serve the interests of unions, industries and professional organizations.
According to DeGolyer: "The thing about Hong Kong is that not only do we have different ways of counting votes ... we also have 31 different franchises" in the 30 different functional constituency polls and the geographical polls.
"Usually all that's required of a person to vote is that they satisfy an age threshold and are registered to vote. In Hong Kong, the rules for who can cast corporate votes are extremely murky," he said.
Only 199,000 residents of Hong Kong are registered to vote in functional constituencies, compared to 3.2 million residents registered to vote for candidates in geographical ones.
This leads to major imbalances. The Labour functional constituency, for example, has three LegCo seats, but barely more than 500 registered voters; Kowloon West has 420,000 voters and 4 seats.
DeGolyer argues, however, that it is not the complexities of the system that put Hong Kong people off voting.
"The functional constituencies draw on the history of the British, and if you look closely, the intent of functional constituencies are very clear: to entrench and protect the interests of a class," he said. "Hong Kong people are very intelligent, and they are put off by LegCo's impotence."
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS