【英语中国】北京再给香港完全民主的希望泼冷水

Beijing threw another bucket of cold water at Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, as it further telegraphed its intentions to keep the city's politics firmly under its control.

This week, the Communist Party's top local representative, Zhang Xiaoming, declared that any system of universal suffrage in Hong Kong must conform to the city's mini-constitution Basic Law, and that an open nomination of candidates wouldn't be accepted.

While Beijing has long said the city can begin electing its top leader by universal suffrage in 2017, what that system will look like hasn't been spelled out. The city's chief executive is currently elected by a committee of 1,200 people--which is largely stacked with pro-Beijing and pro-business representatives--and pro-democracy activists worry that such a committee also will be used to screen candidates and allow only Beijing-friendly aspirants to run.

Mr. Zhang appeared to give more credence to this fear Thursday, in a letter uploaded to the Beijing liaison office's website reiterating the fact that under Basic Law, any leader must be nominated by a 'broadly representative' group, such as the existing election committee.

'Basic Law's Article 45 already clearly stipulates that candidates must be nominated by a broadly representative nominating committee according to democratic procedures,' Mr. Zhang wrote, 'and there are no other options.'
Pro-democracy legislators--whose relations with Mr. Zhang experienced a brief thaw earlier this year at an unprecedented summer meeting--took umbrage at his remarks.

'The existing nominating committee is based on a very narrow electorate, ' said Civic Party legislator and lawyer Dennis Kwok. 'It's not a broadly representative committee.'

Open nominations would be one way to try to address that problem, Mr. Kwok said. For example, candidates could be required to secure a certain threshold of support from the public--say, 3%-4%--to gain a place on the ballot.

'Civic nomination would be a clean-cut, easy way to remedy the current problems with the system,' he said. 'I'm surprised [Mr. Zhang] wasn't even willing to discuss it.'
Local hopes for a fully functioning democracy were dealt another blow in March, when a top legal representative from the National People's Congress said that any candidate who wanted to lead the city must 'love China'--thereby excluding some of the city's top opposition lawmakers, who are energetic in their calls for an end to one-party rule.

Though the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997, it maintains its own independent economic and political systems under the principle of 'one country, two systems,' including a free-wheeling press and vocal pro-democracy movement that regularly inspires tens of thousands of people to take to the streets. In recent months, the tenor of the debate over universal suffrage has heightened, with activists threatening to shut down the city's central business district in a nonviolent civil disobedience movement next summer should a plan for 'genuine' democracy fail to move ahead.

Bloomberg News 一名女子打着伞从香港立法会大楼前走过。
北京给香港的亲民主运动又泼了一盆冷水，进一步流露出力图将香港的政治制度牢牢控制在自己手中的意图。

上周，中联办主任张晓明表示，香港的任何普选制度都必须符合香港基本法，“公民提名”的做法将不被接受。

尽管北京长期以来一直说，2017年香港可以实行行政长官普选，但一直没有说明普选制度的具体内容。香港特区行政长官目前是由1,200人组成的委员会选举产生，该委员会成员多为亲北京和亲商界的代表。亲民主活动人士担心，这样一个委员会也将被用来筛选候选人，只允许与北京关系好的人参选。

上周四中联办网站发布了一封信，在信中张晓明似乎使这种担忧变得更加可信。他重申了这样一个事实：根据基本法，任何行政长官都必须由具有广泛代表性的委员会提名，比如现有的选举委员会。

张晓明写道：基本法第45条已明确规定，（候选人）由一个有广泛代表性的提名委员会按民主程序提名，并无其他选项。

亲民主议员对他的话表示不满。今年夏天，在一次前所未有的会谈中，这些议员与张晓明的关系曾一度缓和。

香港公民党(Civic Party)籍立法会议员、律师郭荣铿(Dennis Kwok)说，现有的提名委员会是基于一个范围非常窄的选民群体，不是一个具有广泛代表性的委员会。

郭荣铿说，“公民提名”是解决这个问题的一个途径，比如说，可以要求候选人必须获得一定的公众支持率才能参选，比如3%到4%。

他说，公民提名将解决提名制度中现有问题的一种明确而简单的方法，我很意外张晓明甚至不愿讨论公民提名。

今年3月，香港当地对实现完全有效运作的民主制度的希望再次遭受打击，当时全国人大法律委员会主任委员说，任何行政长官人选都必须“爱中国”，因此将香港一些积极呼吁结束一党制的高层反对派议员排除在外。

尽管1997年香港回归中国，但根据“一国两制”的原则，香港仍保留着自己独立的经济和政治制度，包括言论自由和直言不讳的亲民主运动，这类活动常常引发成千上万的民众走上街头。近几个月，围绕普选的争论愈发激烈，活动人士威胁说，如果实现“真正”民主的计划不能向前推进，他们明年夏天将关闭香港中央商业区，开展非暴力公民不合作运动。