This Sunday is Hong Kong's Chief Executive election's day. It is a sad joke among a world of well developed jurisdictions.
This sickening election may not be significant enough to make international headline. Being a part of the local media I resent of how real sentiment is being trivialized in the election coverage.
Editors in newsrooms are a bunch of sluts deprived of real democracy to treat a fake election like real. We pretend it is a competitive election because we have no choice. News has to go on and there are two candidates. If you don't run the story, others would. Universities are also very busy polling the public about which candidate they think would have a chance to win. Would it be the current chief executive Donald Tsang pre-approved by the Central Government in China or a Civic Party lawmaker and barrister Alan Leong....hmmm...I wander.
The result of the election is predetermined and it makes me sick.
Alan Leong, without China's blessing, participated in the fake election knowing that he would certainly lose. Watching him running for the top post with Donald Tsang is more brutal than watching a girl guide holding a jar of cookie crumbs fighting Godzilla, in a small cage.
Leong goes along the ride and became a political star. His participation in the fake election rubs in the pressure for Tsang to face the lack of universal suffrage in his next term of five years.
Hypnotizing the younger generation to love mother China
While Beijing has yet to grant universal suffrage to Hong Kong, the civil education is heavily hypnotizing the younger generation to love mother China. But people, in what the HK government always like to label itself as" Asia's World Class City", still do not have a say in a society they live in. Their best interests, such as improving the worsening air quality, smaller class sizes in schools, better social services for elderly, children and domestic violence victims, minimum wage for the underpaid workers.....are not being reflected in government policies.
Their interests are "tied in" to an 800-member strong Election Committee comprising members of the Legislative and Executive Council. Plus other important figures "representing'' the rest of the 7 million population in Hong Kong. Those important figures, mostly, are the territory's richest and most powerful people. Who will give a damn that a lot of old people in Hong Kong are picking up paper boxes to make a living because they are not entitled social security payment? Nor would they give a shit about domestically abused women not having enough shelters to live just to avoid violent husbands? Not to mention other controversial policies such as minimum wage to protect the underpaid or improving the air quality because they can afford to move somewhere else after earning enough here in Hong Kong when the air became unbreathable.
2007 is the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China. God knows how many millions would be again spent just on
fireworks? Fireworks that would only last for a few seconds above the shrinking Victoria Harbour due to land reclamation, is it what Hong Kong people need?
Chief Secretary for Administration Rafael Hui Si-yan went all the way to Sichuan last month licking baby panda arses. He made sure everyone knows he is super grateful to China to give Hong Kong another two lovely pandas (he wants another two because the existing ones in the Ocean Park are dying of old age) . Hui's high profile visit to China overshadowed Hong Kong people's real sentiment. This is the tenth anniversary, do we want another two pandas that Taiwanese turned down last year, or we want universal suffrage to achieve real democracy? This is something we need to think about while celebrating the tenth anniversary after getting rid of the British.
This Sunday's election is something we should be ashamed of. It's a waste of public resources. Why bother to go through the bureaucracy when we already know who is going to win? This is not exciting. Why are we pretending the election would give us a surprising result? Who are we trying to fool here?
Let Godzilla and the Girl Guide out of the small circle election because Hong Kong people want universal suffrage. We want a government that would listen to people's best interests, but not the richest who have the privilege to vote.