NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed: …Hong Kongers have been looking forward to 2017 — the 20th anniversary of the handover and the year that Beijing had ruled that we would finally be able to choose our leader through universal suffrage: one person, one vote. Specifics on how the election process would work have not been established, and now, as the public debate on how to proceed gets under way, Chinese government officials are moving the goal posts by demanding, among other things, that all candidates must “love the country.”
Qiao Xiaoyang, the head of the National People’s Congress Law Committee, told a public forum in 2013 that a person who “confronts” the central government should not become the chief executive. Li Fei, another top Beijing official, has reiterated this point. These are not-so-subtle-hints that Beijing has a much different idea of universal suffrage than Hong Kongers — and the rest of the world.
Beijing loyalists are seeking to control the 2017 election through the nomination process. They say that chief executive candidates should be picked by a nomination committee, and not the wider public, and contend that if every Hong Konger has the right to vote in a general election (even for preselected candidates), then the administration will be fulfilling the “universal suffrage” requirement… (more)
