At this point in 2019, it is generally assumed and accepted that Hong Kong’s pro-establishment camp will
suffer a devastating blow in the district council elections come November.
Instead, pro-establishment lawmakers are looking ahead to the Legislative Council election next year, and holding out the hope that a year will be long enough for
people to forgive, or at least forget. More pertinently, they are hoping they can count on the pan-democrats to screw up again.
This is not entirely wishful thinking: the pan-democrats do have a history of sabotaging themselves, with the most recent instance being, well, unbelievably recent. Just in 2018, they managed to
lose not one but two geographical constituency by-elections triggered by the disqualification of lawmakers over
oath-taking.
Some tried to chalk this up to a profound change in the political environment – something about people being resigned to Beijing’s increasing
assertiveness. But as we have seen in the past 15 weeks, many in Hong Kong are defiant, not resigned.
In 2018,
Edward Yiu Chung-yim – who would lose to Vincent Cheng Wing-shun of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong – simply acted as if the seat was his to take. He took for granted that he would have the support of traditional allies and voters alike.
As for Labour Party veteran Lee Cheuk-yan’s defeat to political rookie Chan Hoi-yan, there were many factors, the most apparent of which is how undemocratic the pan-democrats are in practice. For all its sloganeering, the pro-democracy camp has not been able to handle dissent without taking an autocratic approach, and has disillusioned many people.
The rise of localism – and of
candidates of that political flavour, especially in the 2012 Legislative Council election – was in many ways the result of the splintering of the pro-democracy camp, and growing public frustration at the camp’s failure to achieve meaningful results.
It should have surprised no one when an old-timer like Lee failed to win in 2018. Worse, a former ally of the pan-democrats had split the vote in that poll, which was just another display of the
disunity that had undermined the camp in the first place.
Those demoralising defeats were a wake up call for the pan-democrats, who seemed to have been transformed. But the question is, have they really changed for the better?
The pro-establishment camp is not the only side struggling to hold its base, so is the pro-democracy camp. The leaderless
“revolution of our times” is, in essence, a total rejection of the traditional power structure of party politics. Surging across the city like
water, the protest movement represents a rejection of mainstream political parties and politicians.
In these months of street protests, we have seen less and less of the pan-democrats on the ground. Members and supporters of the protest movement simply do not look to them for leadership. On that fateful day in July,
pro-democracy lawmakers tried to stop protesters from storming Legco but were told to go away.
That was surely a cry of despair, coming after years of the pan-democrats’ failure to get over themselves and try something more constructive than their usual chamber antics, disruptions and filibustering. They can’t go on playing the same old tune any more. Hong Kong needs political leaders, on both sides, who can actually provide leadership.
Definitely, Hong Kong needs a robust and effective opposition. It is because Hong Kong doesn’t have one that some people, rightly or wrongly, feel they have no choice but to take matters into their own hands – and take to the streets in the manner we have seen. An opposition that takes a back seat and holds press conferences in lieu of real work – rather like the government – is not the sort of opposition that can win hearts and minds.
The pan-democrats are likely to win this year, but unless they become relevant, they will be as easily abandoned next year as they were last year.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA
