註: 先前原來有朋友幫手翻譯了文章轉載, 再連接原文. 其實我寫英文快過中文, 假如話題有趣, 中英無拘, 今次先寫英文, 各位可以直接轉載不必翻譯。
The Hong Kong election reform confrontation has escalated to new height recently, with the Chief Executive CY Leung encroaching to comment on something he knows little about – international standard for democracy.
The Hong Kong election reform confrontation has escalated to new height recently, with the Chief Executive CY Leung encroaching to comment on something he knows little about – international standard for democracy.
According
to CY Leung, there is nothing so “international” about the Hong Kong Basic Law,
so the call for “universal suffrage” as required under “international standard”
bears no relevance to Hong Kong, according to him at least…..[1]
And his logic is this - many political and economic arrangements in Hong Kong
do not comply with international standards, such as permanent
residents with overseas nationality being allowed to enjoy election rights.
Interesting
argument – it is for the first time that we learn that the Basic Law of Hong
Kong has nothing to do with international standards. So what has become of Hong
Kong? Not an international financial center anymore? And this place is ruled by
something that has nothing to do with international standard?
Halloween
came too early or what? At least I thought April 1 passed for quite a while…
Before further
damage is done to Hong Kong, well, I believe basically he is just trying to
refuse accepting a fair election for Hong Kong, whereby candidates can be “screened
out” for reason no more than differences in political views (frankly it is really puzzling why there ever
need to have election if candidates do not vary on political view? ); such that
the government can effectively “weed out” any dissenting candidate by a “nomination
committee”[2]
thus usurping the rights of citizens to cast their vote – the real vote is in
fact to be casted by the “nomination committee”, and rendering the “general
election” nothing more than a show; as it is not even a “vote of confidence” when
there is no “objection” option. So even if the candidate gets only one vote,
there you go – election completed. That will be so sweet for CY as his last
record was 689 votes, how much better if he really only needed 1.
The Macau
election is a very good example on shape of things to come – that the Chief
Executive Election has only one candidate[3];
so you may vote … like it or not. Even if there is only one vote casted, the candidate
still wins – in a “general” election…..sort of.
So as
there is still a little bit of hope for Hong Kong before things got settled (by
Beijing at least), let’s take a closer look at that interesting statement –
that since election rights are enjoyed by people with “overseas nationality”,
general election need not follow “international standard”.
For anyone
with a basic knowledge of international law should be able to pick up the
basics – Hong Kong is NOT an independent sovereign state, and thus something
really don’t apply. But that is not what CY understands to be.
A simple
comparable example is the European Union: under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty[4],
voting rights in local elections (which no one doubted their international
standard) can be recognized by member countries for “residents” of non-EU
nationality. The perquisite is only
residency, not nationality. It originated
as a reciprocal treatment to equalize all voting rights in “local elections” among
member states, but since so many member states already have various arrangements
for non-EU nationals especially those that allowed “multiple nationalities”,
the reciprocal treatment turned into a rather general acceptance of
non-national voting rights for local elections.
“Varying
degrees” of course, such as equal treatment by the foreign country, etc, but nonetheless
it is a genuine right to vote just like any EU national within their
jurisdiction.
So when
CY mentioned that it is NOT an international standard when non-nationals are allowed
to take part in local elections, I can only speculate that no one had been able
to read him any newspaper from Europe.
The other
more “authentically British” invention is by the Commonwealth states, that
despite their “independent sovereignty”, voting rights awarded to residents rather
than nationals is not a rarity[5]. It is really up to the individual states to
legislate laws to that effect. So it is more a matter of practice than
principle, and there is nothing so “patriotic” or “exclusive” about election
rights, at least to the ordinary minds of people brought up under British rule. And it is really curious that CY in fact sent
his daughter to study Law in the UK, so he could have got the answer by making
a simple call – if and only if his daughter would like to speak with him
though, sadly.
So
before we really jump to any conclusion about rights to a fair election, let’s
not waste time on this “patriotic” argument – that factually speaking, there is
nothing so special about non-national residents having equal right to vote in
local elections in the host country where they live. The issue is on “fairness”.
And nothing in the example on jurisdictions cited above would lay down such a
laughable bar as to effectively taking away the right of voters to cast their
vote, by someone else which they have not entrusted with casting a vote for
them.
If we
really want a talk on proxy war, let’s be frank about it then, otherwise - you can
try harder CY, but sorry no luck down this line of argument.
[2] But did the citizen voted for the “nomination committee” to
represent them in casting the vote? Interesting question, we’ll deal with that
in another discussion later.
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