Hong Kong Chief Executive election, 2007

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Rafael Hui
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Rita Fan
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Kuan Hsin-chi
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An election was held on 25 March 2007^[1] to select the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, at the AsiaWorld-Expo convention centre. Only the 800 member Election Committee (EC) can vote. The EC is elected by 3% of the population in Hong Kong. Incumbent Donald Tsang was reelected with 649 votes to the pro-democracy candidate Alan Leong's 123. There were also 5 invalid votes.

Incumbent Donald Tsang is widely expected to secure re-election in a landslide, as he was nominated by 641 members. The other candidate, Alan Leong of the Civic Party(公民黨), who is representing the pro-democracy camp, secured 132 nominations, ensuring that he would be a candidate in the election. His participation also means that this will be the first CE election since 1997 with more than one candidate.

The pro-democracy camp had 156 candidates contesting EC membership and they had initially expected to win 72 seats.^{[citation needed]} The actual results were much better for the pro-democracy camp: They won 114 seats from 137 candidates. Adding to that the about twenty pro-democracy LegCo members who are ex officio members of the EC, it seems almost certain that Leong can get the 100 nominations needed.

All pro-democracy candidates in Accountancy, Education, Engineering, Health services, Higher education, IT and Legal won; the pro-democracy Legal candidates won all the seats in their sector.

There are two candidates in this election: Donald Tsang and Alan Leong. There were two debates being held and being live broadcast on TVB Pearl and the RTHK. There was a survey conducted by the HKU Public Opinion Programme after the first debate. The survey reflects that there were 65.5% of the interviewees supporting Donald Tsang, while Alan's 21%.^[2] After the second debate, there was still more supporters for Donald Tsang, which was 68.4% vs Alan's 23.1%.^[2] Donald Tsang still took the lead.

The first debate consisted of 900 participants, including the 530 Election Committee members, mainly the politicians. The second debate consisted of 200 participants, which were randomly chosen by the University of Hong Kong and the Lingnam University of Hong Kong. This is the second competitive CE election in HKSAR. Public was excluded from the first TV debate.

1 Election debates
- 1.1 The first debate
- 1.2 The second debate
2 Protests
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Election debates

Two debates were held between Donald Tsang (曾蔭權)and Alan Leong(梁家傑)before the election.These two election debates wrote a new page of history of Hong Kong, by creating a new election culture. However, not every Hong Kong citizens expect this kind of election.

The first debate was held on 1st March,2007, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre(香港會議展覽中心) from 7:00pm to 8:30pm, the president was Mrs. Rita Fan (范徐麗泰). And the second one was a 90-minute debate held at the TVB City in Tseung Kwan O, co-organized by the 8 main media corporations in Hong Kong on 15th March,2007. The masters of ceremony were Liang Jiarong from ATV and 郭艷明 from Metro Broadcast.Both debates were broadcast real-time by TVB, ATV and RTHK. During the debates, two candidates discussed widely issues related to economics, politics, education, environmental protection and the gap between the rich and the poor. Public places such as the shopping malls apm in Kwun Tong and Time Square in Causeway Bay had their big television screens showing the debates and attracted crowds of citizens to watch.

[edit] The first debate

This was the first time for Hong Kong to have a broadcasting debate between the Chief Executive candidates after the hand-over in 1997. Citizens expect the 2 candidates to have a in-depth discussion about the policy in the future. However, it turns out to be a fully-prepared debate.

530 members of the Election Committee attended the forum. The general public was not allowed to attend the debate but their questions to the candidates were collected in advance through fax or e-mails. A total of 3409 questions were collected and 6 of them were drawn out for the candidates to answer in the debate.^[3] This kind of question-collecting was regarded as a method to control the media coverage.

According to the regulations of the debate, direct questioning between the candidates was prohibited. The debate, which lasted 90 minutes, was divided into 4 sessions. The two candidates first delivered their election platform. Each of them got 3 minutes for delivery. Alan Leong delivered his election platform first and Donald Tsang followed. After that there was a question-and-answer session, questions raised by 22 members of the Election Committee and 7 citizens were answered, covering areas of democracy (doubts on universal suffrage), economic development, educational reform, etc. The democracy problem was concerned by many committee members and they expected the future Chief Executive can deliver their hopes to the Central Government of the PRC. Each of the chosen Committee members were allowed to raise questions in 30 seconds. For example, 陳捷貴 failed to complete the questions within the time limit and was stopped by Mrs. Fan immediately and hence he lost the opportunity to ask question. And the candidates had got 20 minutes to respond to each question. They were not allowed to use any props, notes, charts or diagrams but notes were allowed to be taken. For the conclusion session, Donald Tsang was the first one to give the conclusion.

Political activist "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung (梁國雄) interrupted the debate just before the introduction of election platform by Donald Tsang, in order to express his opinion about the method of chief executive election. He tied a bowtie and put a handkerchief in his pocket, which was a metaphor of Donald Tsang and Alan Leong respectively. He was crawling in front of the stage and shouting his slogan about opposing the small-loop election, but immediately be dismissed under the guidance of 10 securities. In addition to Long Hair, there were also other organizations protesting outside the venue. Their main concerns were the lack of public participation in the forum and also some social problems which existed in society.

Most of the local newspapers did not report much on the contents of the election platform proposed by the two candidates, but rather reported more on their debating skills, behaviour, presentation and even how they dressed in the forum.

A survey^[4] conducted by the University of Hong Kong shows that after the debate Donald Tsang still leads. A public opinion programme organized by the University of Hong Kong has shown that 46.5% of the 510 respondents considers Donald Tsang outperformed Alan while 33.9% of them thinks vice versa. 67.9% of them said that they would vote for Donald Tsang as the Chief Executive and only 21.7% of them would vote for Alan Leong if they had the voting right. Tsang wins public support because of his strength in the details of policy issues, while Leong's understanding of public finances and other policies seems to be weaker than Tsang. Besides, Leong's promises are believed to be unfeasible. Both candidates gained increased support from the general public after debate as indicated by the survey results, compared to a previous survey where only 65.3% and 16.1% of the respondents support Donald Tsang and Alan Leong being elected respectively. Nevertheless, all the figures reflect an unexpected performance displayed by Leong, who adopted a combative approach and seized every opportunity to criticize Tsang, in terms of environmental protection and the possibility of universal suffrage in 2012. On the other hand, it is observed that Tsang sought to present himself as a stateman and emphasized on defensing rather than attacking the weaknesses of Leong.

Besides the survey of the University of Hong Kong, a survey conducted right after the debate by the Public Governance Programme of Lingnan University shows that 61.4% of the 611 respondents supports Donald Tsang while just 25.9% of them supports Alan Leong. In the survey, 26.7% of the respondents has an improved impression upon Donald Tsang after the debate; while 13.1% of them has an impaired impression and 57.4% of them has their impression unchanged upon Tsang. In contrast, out of the 611 respondents, 36.5% of them has an improved impression upon Alan Leong.

[edit] The second debate

200 audiences from the general public were allowed to participate in this event to raise questions. This debate was divided into 3 sessions: social livelihood, politics and economics as themes for each session. During the debate, the two candidates answered 9 questions from the audience and 6 questions raised by the media respectively.

After the second debate, Donald Tsang said that he was very grateful for the electronic media in amounting this debate, which enables he and Alan to have an opportunity to explain through the media to the 7 million people of Hong Kong on their platforms and what they propose to do if they were elected. It was a meaningful exchange. And also from the questioning from the members of the public, one immediately gets the impression that Hong Kong people are interested in Hong Kong’s economic affairs, livelihood issues as well as political issues. He was really proud of Hong Kong people and very grateful for the support Hong Kong people have given him during the whole campaign.Donald Tsang also said that the commitment to universal suffrage is enshrined in the Basic Law which is a national policy. Nobody can change it. He promised he will start planning and negotiating the issue on the universal suffrage within the coming 5 years if he is successfully renewed the post. People referring to manipulation of politics, dirty politics must…that may not be welcome. As far as he is concerned, Hong Kong is a mature economy. The debate that he just held, it was a very mature exchange. It exposed his and Leong's strengths and weaknesses. This is all it is meant to be.^{[citation needed]}

On the other hand, Alan Leong said that Hong Kong has won regardless of the results and people are more interested in politics after the two election debates,its political culture has changed and the city will never be the same.^{[citation needed]}

According to the second survey on Chief Executive Forum^[2]carried out by the University of Hong Kong, the instant poll showed that 38.9% of 520 respondents think that the performance of Donald Tsang was better than that of Alan Leong, while 39.3% of the respondents think Alan Leong performed better. The result shows a significant differnce, compare with the first instant poll, in which Mr. Leong was behind his rival.

[edit] Protests

Some pro-democracy politicians refuses to participate in the CE and EC elections, claiming to do so is to legitimizing undemocratic practices. On the day before the EC elections, the Civil Human Rights Front organised a protest. They walked backwards around LegCo 7 times, then marched slowly to Central Government Offices, symbolising that EC is a great leap backwards for democracy and it slows down the progress of democracy.

Leung Kwok-hung trapped himself in a giant bird cage and followed Leong around on EC election day to protest Leong's participation. He also shouted slogans at the ballot counting center such as: "Down with small circle elections! Shame on Civic Party! Shame on Democratic Party! Shame on Donald Tsang!"