June 18, 2010, 3:21 AM EDT
By Mark Lee and Frederik Balfour
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang lost a televised debate with barrister and opposition leader Audrey Eu on plans to change the city’s electoral system, polls showed.
Tsang said the proposal to change the way Hong Kong elects lawmakers and the chief executive in 2012 would move the city along the path to full democracy, and accused Eu’s side of trying to stall the plan. “We’d rather stand still than take a step backward,” Eu replied.
Seventy-one percent of respondents in two university surveys said Eu won the debate, the South China Morning Post and Standard newspapers said. Forty-five percent of people polled by University of Hong Kong said they were “more opposed” to the government’s proposals after the debate, while 20 percent said they were more supportive, said the Post, which co-sponsored one survey. No margin of error was given.
Eu’s pro-democracy group argues the central government in Beijing’s package doesn’t go far enough to deliver democracy and is stacked in favor of business groups dominating the so-called functional constituencies that make up half the 60 seats in the Legislative Council. Tsang says opposition demands should be addressed after the plan goes through.
“It’s obvious Audrey was the better performer,” said Joseph Cheng, professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong.
Still, the debate probably won’t make the government deliver changes to the proposal demanded by pro- democracy groups, he said.
Public Protest
“For a harmonious society you need a fair system,” Eu said during a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong today. “But functional constituencies are causing problems, they are the obstacle,” she said, describing them as an “anchor” weighing Hong Kong people down.
“The anchor is put there not by the Hong Kong people but by the central authorities with a string of broken promises as well as by people with vested interests.”
The debate is also unlikely to have won over any of the 23 legislators who vowed to block the proposals, and may have been aimed more at salvaging Tsang’s reputation with the central government in Beijing, Alan Leong, a lawmaker in Eu’s party said before the debate. The package needs a two-thirds majority to pass, unless China makes concessions.
LegCo is to vote June 23 on the proposal, which would see the number of lawmakers increased by 10. Five would be directly elected and five would represent functional constituencies. The number of Beijing appointees who elect the chief executive would be increased from 800 to 1,200.
Tung Chee-hwa
Tsang’s predecessor Tung Chee-hwa stepped down from his post in 2005, more than two years early, after a botched attempt to push through separate China-sponsored constitutional changes sparked street protests and a deadly virus harmed tourism.
Tsng’s own popularity has been slipping amid the wrangle over elections, polls show.
On June 4, about 113,000 people attended a candlelight vigil to mark the 21st anniversary of China’s crackdown on pro- democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, the largest number since 1989 according to police estimates.
Several hundred people gathered in a park near yesterday’s debate, cheering for Eu and booing Tsang. Police had set up a visible security presence around nearby streets as a precaution.
Chinese President Hu Jintao in December told Tsang to “handle constitutional development issues properly to ensure social harmony.” Premier Wen Jiabao urged him to resolve “deep-rooted contradictions in Hong Kong.”
Two Systems
One of those contradictions is the “one country, two systems” formula struck when Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997. While Hong Kong has multiple political parties and more civil liberties than in mainland China, the timetable for greater democracy was set by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in Beijing.
Eu is calling for universal suffrage in 2012, five years earlier than China’s plans for letting the public vote for the chief executive and eight years before planned direct elections of all LegCo members.
--With assistance from Marco Lui and Ben Richardson in Hong Kong. Editors: Ben Richardson, Dirk Beveridge
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