Mon, Sep 06, 2004 page5

• Hong Kong poll designed so voters' will won't prevail

  DIFFERENT FRANCHISES Political scientists find both different ways of counting votes and various functional constituencies, which makes matters `extremely murky'

  • AFP
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  When Hong Kong voters go to the polls next week they will face a complex system riddled with quirks, one of which is that only half of the seats in the legislature are actually chosen by direct vote.

  Power can never truly be said to be in the hands of the people, as the remaining half of the 60 seats traditionally go to pro-Beijing candidates hand-picked by members of the business community.

  The process here baffles even political scientists who study elections.

  "It's extremely convoluted. While some other countries may combine more than one type of voting, none combine varying types of franchise," said Michael DeGolyer, director of the Hong Kong Transition Project, which has worked to analyze the direction of political development.

  Based on a proportional representation system, voters in the five directly elected geographical constituencies here do not choose individual candidates, but blocs representing various parties or factions.

  According to the proportion of ballots cast in their name, parties will be allocated seats in LegCo. Depending on how many seats each party receives, they will appoint members of their party from the published list.

  In Kowloon East, for example, with its 524,000 registered voters and five LegCo seats, the minimum for a party to get a seat would be 104,800 assuming everyone voted, as it is calculated by the total number of votes cast divided by the number of available seats.

  If not all seats were filled by parties satisfying the minimum quota, then of the remaining parties, those with the most total votes fill the vacancies.

  Geographical constituencies are calculated on a ratio of approximately one seat per 100,000 people.

  This all leads to unusual campaign flyers like Democratic Party lawmaker Yeung Sum's. It has the normal blurb, but he is pictured with two colleagues and his appeal for voters' ticks asks not that they back him, but instead pick a "list" of candidates.

  However, it is the fact that only half of LegCo is selected in this way that remains the system's most unusual aspect. The remaining 30 seats go to so-called "functional constituencies," which operate on a first-past-the-post electoral system, purportedly designed to serve the interests of unions, industries and professional organizations.

  According to DeGolyer: "The thing about Hong Kong is that not only do we have different ways of counting votes ... we also have 31 different franchises" in the 30 different functional constituency polls and the geographical polls.

  "Usually all that's required of a person to vote is that they satisfy an age threshold and are registered to vote. In Hong Kong, the rules for who can cast corporate votes are extremely murky," he said.

  Only 199,000 residents of Hong Kong are registered to vote in functional constituencies, compared to 3.2 million residents registered to vote for candidates in geographical ones.

  This leads to major imbalances. The Labour functional constituency, for example, has three LegCo seats, but barely more than 500 registered voters; Kowloon West has 420,000 voters and 4 seats.

  DeGolyer argues, however, that it is not the complexities of the system that put Hong Kong people off voting.

  "The functional constituencies draw on the history of the British, and if you look closely, the intent of functional constituencies are very clear: to entrench and protect the interests of a class," he said. "Hong Kong people are very intelligent, and they are put off by LegCo's impotence."
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