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defrogWow. The election year is finally over, the votes are in, and it didn’t make all that much of a difference in the end. Still, that’s not a bad thing, since the pro-democracy camp managed to surprise everyone by not losing, and ...
Hmmmm? What? Oh no, not the US election. That doesn’t happen for another two months. I am speaking of the Hong Kong Legislative Council elections, which happened yesterday (sort of our equivalent of the Congressional mid-terms, only with a lot less people, and even more meaningless).
The short version (which will interest few of you) is that the pro-democracy parties (i.e. the ones pushing for universal suffrage, which we don’t have because we’re not ready, apparently) only lost a few seats, holding on to enough of them to retain veto power in LegCo. Not a huge shake-up in terms of change, but it’s still a fairly big deal. After Beijing told us last year, “You want full democracy? Call us in 2017 and we’ll talk,” the pro-democracy camp looked in pretty bad shape, so the fact that they kept most of their seats is impressive.
On the downside, voter turnout this year was its lowest since 1997. One talking head last night said it was because people aren’t as unhappy with the current LegCo – which is interesting because that would mean we only vote when we want to change the govt, not when we want to preserve the status quo.
Well, we’ve only been a democracy for 11 years, mind. But the fact that the people only get to elect half of the govt (the other half of LegCo is elected by business constituency reps, who also get to vote on which 800 people get to vote for the chief executive) has to be a factor somewhere. When Beijing is telling you yr not mature enough to handle real democracy, why bother? The fun thing there is that Beijing can (and will) point to the low turnout and say, “See? If you really wanted democracy, more people would turn out.”
See what they did there?
But this is old news. And it could be worse, given the varying flavors of democracy out this way. In HK, when we’re unhappy with the govt, we stage peaceful protests and vote out the bums. In Thailand, they storm the PM’s office and refuse to leave until either he resigns or the military overthrows him.
Personally, I sort of like the Japan model: they’ve had two PMs in as many years, and both were forced to step down simply by having their popularity ratings drop to under 30%.
For the Americans tuning in, admit it: there have been many moments in yr life when you wish US politics worked that way. Especially in the last eight years. Or possibly longer.
And so much for democracy in Hong Kong. Oh well, at least “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung kept his seat. He’s always brought entertainment value to LegCo. He's never really accomplished anything as a legislator, but you have to respect anyone who uses his seat to protest the govt he works for, and who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt to official meetings. Why not?
Overthrow yrself,
This is dF
Hmmmm? What? Oh no, not the US election. That doesn’t happen for another two months. I am speaking of the Hong Kong Legislative Council elections, which happened yesterday (sort of our equivalent of the Congressional mid-terms, only with a lot less people, and even more meaningless).
The short version (which will interest few of you) is that the pro-democracy parties (i.e. the ones pushing for universal suffrage, which we don’t have because we’re not ready, apparently) only lost a few seats, holding on to enough of them to retain veto power in LegCo. Not a huge shake-up in terms of change, but it’s still a fairly big deal. After Beijing told us last year, “You want full democracy? Call us in 2017 and we’ll talk,” the pro-democracy camp looked in pretty bad shape, so the fact that they kept most of their seats is impressive.
On the downside, voter turnout this year was its lowest since 1997. One talking head last night said it was because people aren’t as unhappy with the current LegCo – which is interesting because that would mean we only vote when we want to change the govt, not when we want to preserve the status quo.
Well, we’ve only been a democracy for 11 years, mind. But the fact that the people only get to elect half of the govt (the other half of LegCo is elected by business constituency reps, who also get to vote on which 800 people get to vote for the chief executive) has to be a factor somewhere. When Beijing is telling you yr not mature enough to handle real democracy, why bother? The fun thing there is that Beijing can (and will) point to the low turnout and say, “See? If you really wanted democracy, more people would turn out.”
See what they did there?
But this is old news. And it could be worse, given the varying flavors of democracy out this way. In HK, when we’re unhappy with the govt, we stage peaceful protests and vote out the bums. In Thailand, they storm the PM’s office and refuse to leave until either he resigns or the military overthrows him.
Personally, I sort of like the Japan model: they’ve had two PMs in as many years, and both were forced to step down simply by having their popularity ratings drop to under 30%.
For the Americans tuning in, admit it: there have been many moments in yr life when you wish US politics worked that way. Especially in the last eight years. Or possibly longer.
And so much for democracy in Hong Kong. Oh well, at least “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung kept his seat. He’s always brought entertainment value to LegCo. He's never really accomplished anything as a legislator, but you have to respect anyone who uses his seat to protest the govt he works for, and who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt to official meetings. Why not?
Overthrow yrself,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2008-09-08 01:35 pm (UTC)While we might not do everything right here (whoa is that an understatement) I still like our system over what most of the world has.
no subject
on 2008-09-08 03:33 pm (UTC)That applies to a lot of things, but in relation to democracy specifically, if I've learned anything roaming the world, it's that democracy comes in many different flavors and is really, really hard to implement in countries that have thrived an authoritarianism for the last 1,000 years. There's no "one-size-fits-all" model, and what works in one society won't always work somewhere else.
That said, the US system is certainly unique (in good and bad ways). I've wondered what would happen if America shifted to a parliamentary style of democracy, but there's no real reason to. I've said for some time now that the only way to improve US politics is by adopting the Taiwan model, where legislative debates frequently turn into baseball-style fistfights. It'd be just as productive, and more emotionally honest.