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."
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS