A leading pro-Beijing politician in Hong Kong said future leaders of the global financial hub face a grim prospect unless lawmakers and Beijing end their impasse over political reform.
Lawmakers in the territory recently vetoed a proposal to hold public elections for chief executive, after China insisted that only pre-screened, pro-Beijing candidates be allowed to stand.
That veto had followed months of pro-democracy protests that shut down major roads and posed one of the biggest challenges to the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership in decades.
“If you don’t change the system, you can only expect similar people to take the post in the coming years and they will be faced with the same problems,” Jasper Tsang (曾鈺成), the president of Hong Kong’s legislative council and founder of its largest pro-Beijing party, said in an interview.
The comments came after former chief executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) was charged with misconduct on Monday last week.
Tsang is one of three chief executives to have run Hong Kong since Britain handed the territory back to Chinese rule in 1997, and all three have proved unpopular, underscoring Beijing’s struggle to find a credible and acceptable leader for the former colony.
“It will be even more difficult for the chief executive in 2017 to establish a minimum degree of legitimacy,” Jasper Tsang said, calling the prospects for that person “gloomy” and “grim.”
The next chief executive is due to be chosen in 2017.
“We must be able to break the vicious circle. A weak government makes it very difficult for the bureaucrats, for the officials to really achieve and win respect from the public,” Jasper Tsang said.
Tsang said Beijing’s proposal to move towards full democracy in stages showed that it was sensitive to dissatisfaction at governance in the territory. However, it was important to avoid a “revolution” by jumping from the old colonial system to free elections, he said.
He did not offer specific ideas for a compromise between Beijing and Hong Kong’s democrats.
In a major embarrassment for Beijing, Hong Kong’s legislative council in June vetoed its conditions for universal suffrage. That means the chief executive will be again selected in 2017 without a popular vote.
“Beijing is worried about Hong Kong’s destabilizing potential, its embarrassment potential,” said University of Hong Kong law professor Simon Young.
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