tim's experiment

I was going to skip the constitutional reform shindig, partly because I am busy — my son gets married tomorrow — and partly because so many people have had a go already. But they have all missed something, which we will come to in a minute.

There seems to have been a certain amount of bias in the coverage of the whole thing. Much has been made of the split in the pro-democracy camp. But at least it has left the politicians in that camp with some dignity and respectability. After all in the long run people will recognise that it is possible to be devoted to democracy and draw two very different conclusions: that one should vote for anything which gets us nearer to democracy or that one should not vote for anything less than the real thing. The difference is really not one of principle, but of tactics. Judging by Phillip Bowring’s comments in the Post this morning he would not have voted for the reform package. I rather think I would have. The fact that we disagree on this point is not a problem. Of course the politician who told his voters that he would only vote for the real thing has no choice. Those who agreed to negotiate with mainland officials also have no choice. Having asked for the apparently impossible and been given it, to reject it would have cast doubt on the honesty of the whole process. Perhaps they should ask for more next time.

Leader and letter writers have been very excited about the “Long Hair” comment that Szeto Wah’s cancer seemed to have reached his brain. But this is an example of that fine old journalistic tradition, the quote taken out of context. Mr Szeto put brain health on the agenda by suggesting that anyone who voted against the government’s package had a problem with his brain. Having put brains into the arena Mr Szeto had no legitimate complaint about his own being examined, and indeed although other people have complained it seems that he has not.  I must say also that although I have the greatest regard and admiration for much of Mr Szeto’s distinguished record (and I think in the education functional constituency I voted for him several times) there is a certain poetic justice at work here. When he went out of his way to end the political career of Mrs Elsie Tu some pretty nasty things were said on his behalf.

But as I said before, at least the democrats emerge as real people, with real opinions. By contrast the pro-government politicoes look like poodles and the pro-Beijing ones like puppets, What do the Liberal Party and the DAB stand for, one wonders? Whatever they are told to stand for, seems to be the answer.

Now to the missing link. The government is now committed to having five “functional constituency” seats whose electorate comprises the entire population minus that smidgeon who already have functional constituency lay-abouts operating on their behalf. The only condition announced as part of the deal is that candidates will have to be nominated by district board members. This leaves a great deal to be decided. Least surprising headline last week was the one which said that officials were considering “some form” of proportional representation for these seats.

Now I must say that even for me (I was a constitutional historian in my youth) election systems are one of those topics like double-entry book-keeping and pension arrangements which are worthy but dull. The eyelids droop at the mention of their name. So let us keep this simple.

Officials are now pondering how they can fix the system to keep as many democrats as possible out of the new seats.  Given that in the absence of some mammoth mistake some 60 percent of the population will vote for a democrat this is a bit of a tall order. One solution would be to put stringent restrictions on the nomination procedure. If for example we say that any candidate requires the nomination of 15 district councillors from the same district, then we can hope that many “undesirable” possibilities will be unable to reach the starting gate. But this would be a bit blatant. Some less obvious variation will no doubt be attempted. We cannot do the simple thing: divide the territory into five constituencies. each returning one member. That would produce five democrats. So we are probably doomed in the end to some variation on party lists in one monstrous super-constituency covering the whole territory, and the electors having one vote each. This will produce five members who are answerable to nobody but with reasonable luck at least two of them will be from the DAB or its fellow travellers. Remember you read it here first.