Renege is a renege is a renege is a renege...and while not a scholar on the basic agreement in force since Great Britain returned Hong Kong to China, it does appear to me that a renege is exactly what was announced by Beijing today while calling it everything but that. Damn shame, credibility, or one's good name or one's good word, is the single most important element of trust between people and nation-states. This is not the signal that one would think the central government would like to send to Taiwan by way of proxy. Bad law not only makes for bad policy, it makes for long misunderstandings...
Below is a straightforward announcement from Reuters; below that is a whopper of an explanation by the "journalists" at China Daily.
"There will be no universal suffrage for electing (Hong Kong's) third Chief Executive," Tsang Hin-chi, a Hong Kong member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or China's parliament, told reporters in Beijing.
"There will be no universal suffrage for all legislators (for elections in 2008)," he added. Tsang's comments were carried live by Hong Kong's Cable Television.
A renege by any other name would smell as foul: Below is indecipherable--by me, anyway--doublespeak from China Daily attempting to explain the rationale behind the NPC Standing Committee's ruling. If you can understand what it means you are far smarter than this reporter.
The half by half ratio for members of the Council from functional groups and from constituency election shall remain unchanged, the Decision said, adding that the procedures for voting on bills and motions in the Legislative Council shall remain unchanged.
However, the Decision said that specific methods for selecting the Chief Executive in 2007 and forming the Legislative Council in 2008 could be "appropriately modified" in the principle of gradual and orderly progress and in accordance with the Basic Law, the Decision said.
The NPC Standing Committee explained in the decision that Hong Kong's history for democratic election is not long, and it has been for no more than seven years that Hong Kong residents have exercised the democratic rights of participating in selecting the HKSAR Chief Executive.
Since Hong Kong's return to the motherland, the number of directly-elected members in the Legislative Council has been increased remarkably. After half of the members are directly elected in constituency and half are elected by functional groups, the influence of the directly-elected members upon Hong Kong society's general operation, especially the influence upon the executive-led mechanism is yet to be tested by practice, it said.
Moreover, various social circles in Hong Kong currently still have considerable differences about methods for selecting the Chief Executive and for forming the Legislative Council after 2007, and no broad consensus has been reached yet, it noted.
Under such circumstances, conditions do not satisfy the general election of the Chief Executive and the general election of all Legislative Council members, the Decision said.
