East Asia Forum
14 May 2015
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Hong Kong Needs Slow Electoral Change, Not No Electoral Change
Hong Kong Needs Slow Electoral Change, Not No Electoral Change
The Hong Kong government’s election reform proposal will theoretically allow for greater flexibility and competition for the 2017 race for Chief Executive. But pan-democratic lawmakers are vowing to veto the proposal, threatening the result and ultimately the 2017 ‘one person one vote’ election.
On 22 April 2015, the Hong Kong government put forward its proposal to the Legislative Council on selecting the Chief Executive by universal suffrage. The government appealed to the legislature — particularly to the pan-democrats — to vote for the new election initiative. It would allow over five million people to choose from a selection of prenominated leaders.
Nominating procedures will be divided into two parts: the members’ recommendation stage and the committee nomination stage. Under the members’ recommendation stage, any person who gets at least 120 Nominating Committee votes (out of 1200) can seek to run in the Chief Executive race. No candidate is allowed more than 240 votes from the Nominating Committee. This ensures at least five, and at most 10, people can seek nomination.
… Dylan Loh Ming Hui is a research analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University. A version of this article first appeared here in RSIS Commentaries.
RSIS / Online
Last updated on 14/05/2015
