People power shakes wall of China

By MARGARET HARRIS CHENG Herald correspondent

HONG KONG - Hong Kong has just learned the truth of that well-used quote: a week is a long time in politics.

A week ago more than half a million people, most of whom had never before taken part in public protest, took to the streets to demand that national security legislation known as Article 23 be shelved.

And that bill, due to be steamrollered through the legislature today, has indeed been put on the shelf - although the Government still intends to try to get it passed this year.

It is not just the bill that is in trouble. The Hong Kong Government, led by Beijing-anointed Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and a Cabinet of business people, professionals and civil servants appointed by Tung, is floundering.

This is the latest in a long line of debacles he has presided over, ranging from mishandling the arrival of the Sars virus to disastrous economic management, that has led to demands from all quarters that Tung and many of his most hated ministers resign.

And Beijing, whom Tung was pushing Article 23 through to please, is staying ominously silent.

While this sort of thing may happen quite often in active democracies, it is an extraordinary change for Hong Kong. Although promised democracy since the handover to China, the territory's rudimentary democratic institutions have been either eliminated or rendered ineffective.

The worst example of the latter is the Legislative Council, a body that scrutinises bills put forward by the non-elected Government, whose Chief Executive is selected by 800 carefully chosen "electors".

The last British Hong Kong Governor, Chris Patten, legislated to achieve a directly elected legislature for Hong Kong after the handover to China. But this so infuriated Beijing that all relations between British Hong Kong and China were broken off.

Worse still, the incoming Tung Government set up a "provisional legislature" of selected people who met in China until the handover, and in the hours after midnight 1997 passed a range of legislation required by Beijing.

One of these laws rendering "illegal" the sitting elected legislature, which was dominated by pro-democracy politicians.

While 30 of the seats in the present 60-seat legislative council are filled by directly elected legislators, the rest are held by people elected by the same group that chooses the Chief Executive or elected by professional groups, such as chambers of commerce, bankers, real estate companies, doctors and so on.

Most of these support and follow Government policy and were expected by Tung to pass Article 23, no matter what shape it was presented in. To make doubly sure of this, Tung included the leaders of two major parties - the pro-China Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and the pro-business Liberals - in his Cabinet as "ministers without portfolio".

Like most Cabinets, Tung's ministers are obliged to vote according to the collective choice. So by including these two party leaders, Tung was assuring, he thought, the votes of their party colleagues.

Before the July 1 protest, 22 pro-democracy legislators were planning to vote against the legislation, ensuring an easy passage.

But the marchers changed all that. The weekend before the march, Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, who is responsible for the Article 23 legislation, incensed the professional and middle classes by saying that people who were thinking of joining the protest were just looking for "a day out" on a public holiday.

Ip - whose nickname is "broomhead" thanks to an unfortunate hairstyle - made it even worse by saying that nothing the protesters had to say or do would "pressure" the Government in any way. In other words: people of Hong Kong, your opinions are of no interest to us, no matter what.

These remarks stimulated an opposition that Ip - already much despised and ridiculed - and Tung completely underestimated. The middle class decided to take to the streets.

Surveys taken during the march found most protesters held university degrees or professional qualifications.

On the buses, in the offices and email networks of Hong Kong everyone was talking about the march. What will you wear? Have you got a banner? were the only topics of conversation leading up to the big day. The Government thought they might see 50,000 protesters at worst. But anyone who took a bus that week knew better. No one on the march was surprised to see half a million turn up.

Someone else taken by surprise proved crucial to the unfolding saga. James Tien Pei Chun, head of the Liberal party, whose voters all come from profession and middle-class ranks, decided his party's interests lay with the marchers. He may have benefited enormously from Tung's patronage, but Tien and his party saw that Tung's days might be numbered.

Jumping the right way could mean greater power for the Liberals and possibly even a Chief Executive job for Tien. So he jumped on a plane last Friday and went to meet officials from the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office to test the waters. He came back recommending a deferral of the bill.

Without Tien and his Liberals, the Government could not get the bill passed. But Tung is not a man who backs down. He is an old-style Chinese businessman who brooks no opposition from underlings and values "face".

On Saturday, Tung announced a decision to put in three amendments to the most contentious areas of the bill to satisfy its critics. These were:

* Removing an automatic Hong Kong ban on organisations banned in China (this was aimed at getting rid of the Falun Gong, a group Beijing fears).

* Allowing a "public interest" defence to those accused of publishing state secrets.

* Removing a clause allowing police to enter premises without a court-issued warrant.

This, many thought, would bring Tien and the Liberals back into the fold.

Tien lined up with other Cabinet members when Tung made his announcement. But late on Sunday night, the Liberals said Tien was resigning from the Cabinet in order to stand with his colleagues against passage of the bill today.

The head of the civil service, Chief Secretary Donald Tsang, was dispatched to Tien's luxurious flat to persuade him to change his mind. But Tien would not budge. So in the early hours of Monday morning Tung held a meeting with the rest of the Cabinet.

The Hong Kong people learned of their first post-handover victory - Article 23 would be deferred. No date has been set for another attempt to pass it.

Whether the public will get what they really want - an end to the Tung Government and the right to elect the Chief Executive and Cabinet - remains to be seen.

But as Clement York Kee-So, journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said: "The July 1 protest opens our eyes and widens the space for imagination. It is a political paradigm shift in Hong Kong, catapulting the local political ecology into a new era.

"Before July 1, what people felt about Hong Kong was all negative: the society was severely divided, citizens felt powerless, the Legislative Council was tightly controlled by the pro-Government alliance, and people just hoped the Government could grant a bit more of recession in the legislation of Article 23.

"After July 1, the mainstream public opinion has risen, the civic power is fully charged, the balance of power in the Legislative Council has shifted, people want more revisions in the legislation, and they demand faster pace in the reform of the political system."

In the hot seat

* Tung Chee-hwa was born in Shanghai in 1937, the son of a powerful shipping magnate.

* He came to Hong Kong as a refugee in 1947, fleeing the Communist advance in China.

* He graduated from Liverpool University in 1960 and worked for several years in the United States before returning to Hong Kong in 1969.

* Ten years later he became chairman of Orient Overseas Container Line.

* The Chinese leadership invited him to sit on the committee hammering out the Basic Law in 1985.

* He then began taking on various advisory roles for China, and served on former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten's Executive Council for four years.

* He became chief executive designate in 1996, chosen by a Beijing-picked committee.