Leung signals room for more democracy in HK nominations

HONG KONG — The panel chosen to pick candidates for Hong Kong’s 2017 election could be made “more democratic”, the territory’s leader Leung Chun-ying said yesterday, a day after giving an interview to some foreign media saying that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics.

Mr Leung was speaking ahead of the start of formal talks between student protest leaders and city officials yesterday aimed at defusing the crisis in the former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

His comments signalling there was some room for discussion in the process for picking candidates were the first indication of a possible concession to pro-democracy protesters who have blocked city streets for weeks.

“There’s room for discussion there,” he told a small group of reporters from a conference room in his office building. “There’s room to make the nominating committee more democratic.”

In August, the ruling Communist Party in Beijing offered Hong Kong people the chance to vote for their own leader in 2017, but said only two or three candidates screened by a nominating committee could run in the 2017 vote for the city’s next leader.

The protesters want the nominations to be fully open.

Discussion of the potential concession from Mr Leung could only start later in the year, however, when the city government launches a new round of consultations for electoral methods, he added.

The protests have sparked occasional scuffles between demonstrators and the police, who once fired tear gas on the crowd and have also used pepper spray and batons, but have not attempted to clear the streets.

Mr Leung warned that such action “could take place whenever the police see it as necessary”, but did not give a deadline.

In blunt remarks during an earlier interview on Monday with journalists from American and European news media organisations — his first with foreign media since the city erupted in demonstrations — Mr Leung said free elections were unacceptable, partly because they risked giving Hong Kong’s poor and working class a dominant voice in politics.

He acknowledged that many of the protesters were angry over the lack of social mobility and affordable housing in the city. But he argued that containing populist pressures was an important reason for resisting the protesters’ demands for fully open elections.

Instead, he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as Chief Executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead.

Mr Leung said if “you look at the meaning of the words ‘broadly representative,’ it’s not numeric representation”.

“If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 (S$2,290) a month,” he said.

Mr Leung, who has received repeated backing from the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, argued that the way to remedy social grievances was to expand the supply of housing and spur economic growth.

He stressed the importance of maintaining the confidence of its corporate elite, saying that was one of the goals of the city’s Basic Law, written a quarter-century ago after Britain handed sovereignty over Hong Kong back to China.

Mr Leung offered several thinly veiled warnings on Monday that it was risky for the protesters to try the patience of the national authorities.

“So far, Beijing has left it to the Hong Kong government to deal with the situation, so I think we should try our very best to stay that way,” he said.

“Challenging myself,” he continued, “challenging the Hong Kong government at these difficult times will do no one any service, will do Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy no service”. Agencies