By Ong Tee Keat
The magnitude and frequency of foreign interference in the domestic affairs of China have not been seen in any other sovereign state in the past decade. Although the interferences have not been through military action, the intention of some foreign powers to isolate China from the international community and to contain its rise has indeed breached the limits of any diplomatic decorum.
Of all the targets, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been the favorite of the meddling foreign powers. Some Western powers, in the name of promoting liberal democracy, openly supported the violent demonstrators who held Hong Kong to ransom for the major part of 2019. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to the extent of saying that the territory-wide violent protests were “a beautiful sight to behold”, baring the fact that the United States has indeed been interfering in the governance of Hong Kong.
Some Western politicians even launched a blistering vilification campaign against the implementation of the national security law in Hong Kong, which the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature, enacted to restore law and order in the territory.
Electoral system overhaul overdue: Although the hostile Western powers have imposed a punitive ban on the use of cotton from China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, their focus has remained on Hong Kong. They intensified their anti-China campaign when the NPC passed the electoral reform plan for the SAR under the “one country, two systems” framework in March this year. The Western detractors made the same noises when the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) promulgated the “Improving Electoral System (Consolidated Amendments) Bill 2021” in April to introduce necessary changes in the SAR’s electoral system according to the NPC reform plan.
The new legislation seeks to improve Hong Kong’s electoral system, including the election to the LegCo and the method for selecting the chief executive of the SAR. The long overdue electoral overhaul is to ensure “patriots administering Hong Kong”, and plug the loopholes that allow foreign powers to interfere in Hong Kong affairs.
Any impartial observer would concur that the eligibility requirements for legislators in Hong Kong are not very different from other places that elect lawmakers through democratic elections. No legislature in the world would allow a candidate to enter the electoral race without vetting his or her nationality, antecedents, and loyalty to the nation. More so, in Hong Kong where these basic requirements were being misinterpreted by some errant lawmakers, and the system to vet the candidates’ eligibility was generally lax.
Past incidents involving distasteful, if not indecent, shenanigans at the swearing-in ceremony of Hong Kong LegCo serve as a grim reminder of the slack electoral system before the reform.
Double standard on democracy laid bare: No democracy would ever compromise on its lawmakers’ political allegiance to the nation. If any lawmaker on the Capitol or in Westminster were to swear allegiance to another country, much less an adversary country, wouldn’t he or she be charged with treason and punished according to law? By accepting this as the norm in the West, but calling it an “undemocratic” and “oppressive” move if applied in Hong Kong, the Western politicians and media are revealing their true colors of being blatantly biased against China.
Besides, the Western media referred to the Hong Kong insurrectionists as “pro-democracy activists”, but when it came to those who stormed the Capitol Hill on Jan 6, they were labelled hooligans, rioters and “white supremacists”, and brought to book. And, of course, the Western media as usual would either downplay or gloss over the atrocities perpetrated by the police on the people, especially minorities, in the US, but would blow out of proportion even an alleged police brutality in Hong Kong, though no casualty among the protesters was reported throughout the unrest.
The issue of electoral reform is intrinsic to Hong Kong, yet the Western critics were quick to make weird assumptions as soon as it was announced. They questioned the vetting of candidates by the National Security Department of the Hong Kong police, and tried to stigmatize it by claiming it as the harbinger of the imminent crackdown on civil liberties, government critics, and political freedom in the SAR.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily News Exchange Item
