HONG KONG—On March 25, ballots from the 3rd elections for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) was announced with current Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen winning the small group election as expected. Meanwhile, non-governmental organizations held an unofficial yet democratic election, which gave an opposite outcome of 60 percent of the winning ballots going to Alan Leong and only 32 percent going to Mr. Tsang, who was appointed by the Chinese Communist authorities.
During the official election, many civil groups protested inside and outside the official voting site. They protested that the small group selected election (800 electors) was manipulated by the communist regime, and requested a general democratic election. Just before the election, about a dozen members from The Frontier — a non-governmental political group — drove 20 cars, station wagons and trucks with banners stating “Support General Elections,” and “Donald, Shame on You!” to protest outside the voting site at the Asia World-Expo.
Dozens of members of the League of Social Democrats (LSD), including current legislator Leung Kwok Hung, tried to break over the restriction line and ended up clashing with the police.
The convener of The Frontier, Emily Lau, said: “Today is a sad day. Though we hold the executive election, most of the citizens do not have the right to vote. I am one of the selected 800 electors eligible to vote, but I feel shameful for it. So I didn’t vote. I instead protested with most of the citizens who did not have the right to vote. I protest against this shameless election.”
Just four days before the election, Mr. Tsang had ridiculed that the democratic election Ms. Lau wanted could only happen in heaven. Ms. Lau responded back to him to be more aware of his governing position in being responsible to the people of Hong Kong. “I hope that he can really take actions to represent the voices of Hong Kong citizens to the Chinese Communist Party and that every Hong Kong citizen wants to have the right to vote. We want to have a real election in 2012,” she said.
On the same day, the Democratic Party held an unofficial Chief Executive election for every citizen. Fifty-four voting sites were set up all around Hong Kong for all citizens to cast their vote. After the election, the ballots were announced at Hong Kong University. According to the organizers, more than 8,200 people voted. The result was Alan Leong with 5,129 ballots (64 percent), Donald Tsang Yam-kuen got 2,553 (32 percent), 3 percent were blank ballots and 1 percent invalid ballots. In addition, 7,271 ballots (92 percent) supported a general democratic election in 2012, and 448 (5.7 percent) were against it.
Gary Fan, a Democratic Party member who promotes the general election, said that although there were not many voters in the democratic election, the number of voters was more than the small group election.
The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-Kiun, SDB, went to the democratic voting site. He expressed his support for a democratic general election in 2012. Many pro-democratic party members also went to the voting site in Mong Kok to vote.
Mr. Leong said he has achieved his goal by setting the bottom line for the future elections; an election with competition will produce a better result than this time.
