When Hong Kong went to the polls

Tags

democracy, Hong Kong, protests

You’d think it was a head of state election and not a municipal one. When was the last time a local election on a dot on the map made international headlines? But the international media is inordinately interested in Hong Kong these days.

This was a district council election, essentially to vote for the person who sees to small problems in your neighbourhood (admittedly paid handsomely for this as all government officials are).

But given we’ve seen nearly six months of protests this election was (again) being seen as a referendum. I say again because I’ve voted in a few and each time the pan-democrat camp touts it as a referendum.

Well, I’m sick of it. I’d like an election for once to be about what it’s supposed to be about and not a vote on whether Hong Kong wants democracy or not. Because the fact that people are voting already indicates that right (However, note that the number of registered voters is about 50% of the population and this is an ageing population, also that usually only about 40% of that 50% turn out to vote so let that tell you what you need to know about enthusiasm for democracy).

This time was different though. There was a record turnout – 71% of the registered voters. I usually go to vote early and it’s usually me and five oldies. This time there was a queue stretching all the way down the street.

There were clearly a lot of first time voters. While many of these were supposed to be young people, I saw a lot of confused older people who didn’t know which queue to stand in. (The queues were kinda confusing. You needed to line up based on your hkid number but the boards telling you this were at the front of the lines not the back so you might not realise you were in the wrong queue till you got to the front, like one furious grandma did.)

Speaking of grandmas there were rumours that the elderly were being allowed to skip the queue … and people were angry about this! Because the elderly tend to vote for the pro-establishment/pro-Beijing side. The latter parties are notorious for busing in elderly from care homes presumably on the understanding that they vote for the party that bussed them in.

Anyway the Election Commission denied elderly were being allowed to vote first and I didn’t see this either. I did feel sorry for the older peeps queuing up though.

Another rumour was that polling stations would shut early so people should vote early to make sure their votes are counting – hence the long queues at 8 am. This doesn’t make sense and the Election Commission clarified that if in case of violence or any other reason a polling station had to be closed the vote there would be postponed or redone on another day. But people clearly believed the rumours which just goes to show the public mood.

I was conflicted over whether to vote at all. I was disillusioned by how the pan-democrats were piggybacking onto the protests but were clearly too scared to counter the protest narrative in any way – even when a man was set on fire. Even candidates who are lawyers have fuelled the rumour mongering.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the protesters. I just don’t condone everything they do and I think one useful thing the pan-Democrat politicians could do (because they are not actually out there protesting) is to sound a note of moderation when it’s needed (like when someone gets set on fire). But they dare not, because there’s some “with us or against us” thing going on that precludes any criticism (more on that in another post possibly).

I ended up asking V whether he thought I should vote. He said that since I’ve gone through all the trouble of being able to vote, I should. V, by the way, doesn’t vote because he thinks it’s pointless.

Which is a view I’m coming to. But I guess I’m a sucker for democracy. It’s like how in the worst times I pray even though rationally don’t believe in god. Except that I pray when I’m desperate but I’m not even remotely desperate now so I guess I’m more hooked on democracy than religion. Heh.

I finally settled on an independent because a) he’s actually done work in the area b) wrote a few lines on said work on his pamphlet IN ENGLISH.

That’s another pet peeve: how the democrats (except perhaps in fancy HK Island type constituencies) never make an effort to make even the smallest attempt to address a non-Chinese audience.

So, once again, I end up voting not for the person that takes the trouble to promise me something but on some abstract ideal. In Hong Kong, it’s democracy. In India, it’s the hope that you will be not be burnt alive for not being Hindu.

And I’m sick of it. Not sick enough to vote for the BJP in India or even a pro-Beijjng candidate in Hong Kong (thoughd I might countenance a pro-BJ who writes something in English in a less crucial election, if there ever is one).

In this case, the pan-Democrat was finally seen on the street on election morning, where he actually thanked me for my support in English and I wavered briefly but then decided it was too little too late.

Anyway the independent I voted for won, pro-Beijing guy was second and the pan-democrat came a poor third. So it appears I my district there is actually a silent majority, who are not screaming in support of the protests at 10 pm.

My district is clearly an outlier though. Hong Kong voted overwhelming in favor of the Democrats, telling Beijing and our local government to stuff it. I can’t say I’m displeased with the result.

Cynicism

Tags

democracy, Hong Kong

Hong Kong is in its fifth month of increasingly violent protests.*

I am not averse to violence if the cause is big enough. Opposing the extradition bill, which would have allowed China to claim people it deemed criminals, was a big enough cause. Unfortunately, getting the government to shelve that bill required violence on the part of the people.

The current protests are largely an anti-police movement, demanding an inquiry into police use of force on the protesters (both sides have become increasingly violent) and an amnesty for those arrested. I am undecided if this is a big enough cause or even a justified one. Those who break the law for a cause, especially who do so violently, should be admired but perhaps willing to take on the consequences of breaking the law, especially if rule of law is one of the things they seek to defend?

More worrying, the protests which began idealistically have degenerated into something rather hysterical, ethnocentric and strident. There is the tendency to believe the most stupid rumours, and almost desperate need to invent martyrs.

The most troubling aspect is the bullying of anyone who disagrees with the protesters. One of the abiding legacies of China’s cultural revolution were the “struggle sessions” in which people accused of being the bourgeoisie were publicly castigated and humiliated. Ironically, today in Hong Kong something similar is happening to people who disagree with the protesters or refuse to condemn the police. This while the protests purport to defend freedom of speech.

Perhaps being too close to a movement always involves disillusionment.

The surprising personal consequence of the protests is that I have lost my faith in democracy. Universal suffrage is a demand that has been tacked on to the protest agenda, unlike the Umbrella Movement of which it was the central demand. There are some, particularly Western commentators, who argue that full democracy (Hong Kong has a form of limited democracy but not for the highest levels of government) is the answer and that people are rioting because they have no other outlets.

Erm, by that logic, half the world should be rioting and there would never be riots in a democracy. No, people are rioting because violence has proved to be effective and short-circuits the system. They are frustrated and the government pushed its luck in trying to curry favour with Beijing, but some of Hong Kong’s problems are intractable and a democratically elected government would not help.

My sad realisation during the protests is how venal the pro-democracy politicians are. It is so obvious that they are stirring up violence or hesitant to rein it in with an eye on their vote banks. I actually prefer the existing civil servants, who know how government works, to the band of loudmouths who have not really offered any workable solutions to Hong Kong’s problems themselves.

In Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework, agency (the idea that individuals have the power to act and make choices and move events) is a function of an all-encompassing and generative power. Voting in a democracy seems to be just that. You feel like you’re doing something, but you’re not doing much beyond moving the status quo incrementally while feeling like you’re doing something. A sop, basically.

Between India, the US, the Philippines, the UK and now Hong Kong, I don’t feel like the “majority wins” schtick that democracy inevitably becomes is for the best.  Charismatic people, the kind that get elected, are rarely good at governing and increasingly they are too full of themselves to listen to people that can.

Whether one gets a good government seems as much a function of luck as anything else. Democracy, like religion, gives us a sense that we are in control. And, okay, it adds an additional layer of accountability, but the cost seems to be populism.

Hong Kong does not have democracy, but a leader who loses popular support – and there are enough ways to make popular discontent known – will not be reappointed by Beijing. But that leader, being not popularly elected, has a bit more leeway than she would had she been responsible to a particular vote bank.

What Hong Kong, and perhaps most places, need is something of a mix between democracy and leaders who do not have to answer to “the people” who sadly often do not know best.

*Despite which, I don’t feel particularly unsafe, just slightly inconvenienced. The protests necessitate staying out of areas where protests are ongoing but even if one did, the larger fear is being caught up in police reprisals or being caught in an MTR service shut-down than the protesters beating one up, which is my fear during riots in India, for example.

The election

Tags

democracy, India, indian election, Lok Sabha, narendra modi, politics

I thought I was resigned to the inevitable outcome. I thought I was sufficiently detached.

And I was.

In my mind, the worst had happened in 2014. If people could elect this man after he presided over a bloodbath in 2002, it said everything one needed to know.

Still, I expected at least some acknowledgement of the lack of the promised development, of disastrous policies like demonetisation.

Why, I don’t know. I have always maintained that 2014 was an anti-Muslim mandate.

Now it is clear as day. The economy is irrelevant.

I was fine till the end of the day when a colleague from another team came to talk to the Indian colleague on my desk. I could hear murmurs about corruption, about how everybody is celebrating.

I realised that I don’t know a single person who would celebrate this, and for that I am I grateful. But I also realised that these people are just one degree of separation away from me and that to these people, to the majority of the country, the likes of me are not just dispensable to their vision of India Shining, but an impediment to it.