New Twist for Hong Kong Vote

More than half a million people in Emily Lau’s district are eligible to vote Sunday in Hong Kong’s first legislative election under Chinese rule, and now she is running--literally--to win a seat.

Bang! Bang! Bang! She knocks on the metal security gate of an apartment in a vast public housing project and shakes hands between the bars with the woman who opens the door. “Hi, I’m Emily Lau. Vote for me on Sunday, OK?” she says in one breath with a smile. Then she’s off, running down the garbage-strewn hall to the next door: Bang! Bang! Bang!

When China reclaimed Hong Kong from Britain last year, Lau and dozens of other opposition party members were swept out of the legislature by the new government and replaced with more cooperative, pro-China lawmakers.

The election marks Hong Kong’s return to the road toward democracy and a chance for Lau to regain her seat. Victory will be harder this time for Lau and like-minded democrats, who commanded 27 of 60 seats after the 1995 elections. In that balloting, their pro-Beijing rivals won 40% of the vote but garnered only two seats. The losers complained.

So this time, the system is different. For 20 of the 60 seats, votes will be allocated by a complex proportional representation system that also gives seats to the second- and third-place parties in each race.

The system ensures that no single group will dominate the legislature--and that the legislature won’t pose strong opposition to the chief executive, analysts say. “In a head-to-head race, voters are more likely to pick the parties which will challenge the government, like the Democrats,” said Sonny Lo, a professor of political science at Hong Kong University. “But in this system, even the losers can be winners.”

Despite a huge education campaign, voters say they are confused by the new system. And no wonder, considering that there are three ways to win a seat: 30 legislators are chosen by corporate groups, 20 are directly elected, and 10 are selected by a small electoral committee.

To see how confusing the process can be, take the three Laus: Emily Lau, Ambrose Lau and Lau Wing-fat, three unrelated candidates vying in three different ways to win seats in the same legislative council.

Emily Lau, 46, a former journalist and fiery critic of both the former British administration and the current government, is running for a directly elected seat. There are 595,341 voters in her district, and she wants to meet as many as she can before Sunday. On Thursday, after a day of speaking at neighborhood forums and waving at voters like the Tournament of Roses queen from her sound-equipped minivan, the Frontier Party member knocked on more than 1,000 doors in a densely packed housing complex.

“Whew! I think I’ve lost seven or eight pounds doing this,” she says, plopping down on a stone bench in front of the apartment complex. “But personal contact is the most effective way of clinching the vote. If they open the door, 90% will support you.”

Fellow candidate Ambrose Lau, 50, has a much easier job. A dapper lawyer from the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Progressive Alliance, he is trying to win one of 10 posts chosen by an 800-member election committee.

He does most of his campaigning by phone. In these last days before the election, he wants to reach every member at least once, which means he spends every minute on the line. “He talks all day at his desk, he talks on his mobile phone in the car,” said Carson Wen, the party spokesman. “Every minute counts.”

Ambrose Lau’s party shied away from the direct elections, which favor the popular democrats. Instead, it is fielding eight of its nine candidates in “small group” elections that are easier to influence.

“We decided we would not win,” Wen says, “so we’re sticking to constituencies where we have a better chance. . . . We learned through the Provisional Legislature and the [Chinese] People’s Congress, which are the same sort of small groups, that access is extremely important.” The party expects all of its candidates will win.

Then there’s Lau Wing-fat, 62, who doesn’t have to do any campaigning at all--he is guaranteed a legislative seat because no one ran against him.

Lau represents the 132-member Heung Yee Kuk constituency, a group of village elders whose main platform is to preserve local traditions.

Lau wants to revive an ancient custom prohibiting village women from inheriting property, a practice outlawed only recently. Lau says he is aware that his group may not do well in popular elections, so he’s spending his spare time campaigning for three other Kuk members in direct contests.

“If we don’t participate in this Sunday’s elections, people will say the Kuk doesn’t like the electoral arrangements and accuse us of not wanting democracy,” Lau says.

Indeed, with the complicated new voting system and alternate ways for unpopular candidates to grab seats, analysts worry that people may make the simplest choice of all: not to vote.

Turnout is expected to be even lower than the 1995 election’s 35.8%.

The first major democratically run election on Chinese soil since 1949 is being closely watched, not only by international observers here to monitor Hong Kong’s democratization, but also by Beijing. A low turnout may be interpreted as a signal that Hong Kong doesn’t care about democracy.

But Emily, the pro-democracy Lau, thinks that people are abstaining out of anger, not apathy. “It’s not that Hong Kong people are unsophisticated or don’t care about democracy,” Lau says. “It’s that they’re not electing a government, or even a whole legislative council. If we were to have a fully elected legislature, then people would get excited about it.”