Govt deceit on "unfair" DC election
If the government wants to rig the election, it needs to do so fair and square, by disqualifying or jailing candidates it doesn’t like. TLDR I've entered the race and it's bullshit.
The Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) last night issued a press release which directly contradicts the exploits of the Kowloon City District Office, further muddying the waters on the “secret committee” nomination issues and gaslighting the electorate on the fairness of the election.
According to the EAC yesterday, “there is no issue of having no means of contacting subscribers” and that, if sponsor contact details cannot be found, candidates can contact the District Office who will “relay such requests and contact information to the relevant members as soon as possible for them to decide whether to make contact with the requestors”. Alice Mak also said something similar a few weeks back.
Let’s leave aside for a moment what an awful system that would be even if the government was telling the truth – District Council candidates should rely on a (usually political) District Office relaying their basic contact details into the void without ever being able to directly contact or canvass the people who decide who's on the ballot or ever knowing if the nominators even received their details?
But it’s worse than that, because the government is lying.
I know because I asked to the Kowloon City District Office to do exactly what EAC claims they should do – to relay information to nominators – and they refused. They will forward non-election related information or requests but they said they would not relay nomination emails or contact details related to nominations and would not forward any nomination attachments, or, in fact, help in any way.
Either the EAC is lying or the District Office is making up its own rules (and therefore lying). Or (given the District Office rejection came over a week ago, on 26 September) maybe the latest EAC promise is some weird government U-turn where they don't admit their mistake but simply pretend ’twas ever thus. I have written asking for clarification.
Reality check
Just to re-state the issue with some up-to-date figures, these last few weeks I’ve been working at parsing the committee lists in my own district into something manageable.
In fact, against advice, I’m considering making a stand myself – what better way to expose an unfair election than to gonzo right into the middle of it1.
So. There's 155 people on the Kowloon City “Three Committees”.
[correction: in fact 51 are women, 32% of the total] Perhaps the biggest disgrace is that just 17 of the 155, less than 11%, are women. Yes, the secret committee who decides who will be on the ballot (before the male-dominated government prunes the list further through DQ) is ~90% male. But that's a story for another time.
Back to the list. 99 (70%) of the 155 are completely un-findable: either names like “David Ho” producing thousands of hits; or names with zero hits (other than committees themselves).
Then there's 56 (30%) who I’m reasonably sure I’ve identified as actual human beings existing in the real world outside cushy committees. I’ve initially tried to contact these through generally rather sketchy “info@randomlistco_servicedoffice.urg” email addresses or, for the 18 who are past or present District Councillors, through their “official” contacts (usually a Yahoo! email with a lot of numbers in it or a perpetual one-tick Whatsapp).
Buuuut… 12 of those are publicly standing with major political parties, half of them DAB, the others scattered across Business & Professional Alliance (BPA), Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) and one from the Liberal Party2.
So for a realistic nomination attempt, one would be down to the six “independent” district politicians (many of whom have Facebook photo selfies with DAB lawmakers, so aren't exactly independent) and the 28 who will possibly be contactable with some further digging or calls to listco switchboards: 34 in total, or 22% of the pool.
I’ve contacted 46 potential nominators over the last couple of weeks (I contacted DAB/FTU/BPA members anyway, just to say I tried) and I have had one response, from a friendly chap at BPA who said it was too early to be talking about nominations.
I can truly say I’ve been working hard on this: but according to DAB this week, those who can't decipher the lists or break through with the 3+3+3+50 nominations required to get on the ballot, are simply not working hard enough.
Starry Lee3 says the nomination process is simple and that it’s not the government’s fault if people don't put the effort in.
DAB vice-chair Brave Chan pointed to his own “hard work” in standing outside people's clubs [sic] thrusting business cards into prospective voters’ hands.
Starry and Brave’s drip-feed propaganda is crystallising the core of the government’s District Council election narrative: “Every patriot is welcome to participate! All you have to do is follow the simple procedure! We can’t help it if people don't have the tenacity to fill in a simple form!”
EAC last night cold-quenched that narrative into a hard steel ball: “The government has provided a reasonable channel and made relevant arrangements for prospective candidates to reach subscribers and seek nomination,” it says.
In fact it hasn’t. The channel, even if District Offices comply, is not at all “reasonable”. The "relevant arrangements" are bogus. And if the ballot papers are effectively censored by a secret committee, the right to stand in the election is absolutely undermined, rendering the election grossly unfair.
More importantly, the district needs some serious attention, with existing lawmakers and District Councillors abandoning any semblance of working for the local community and its development.
That’s Joe Ho, Kowloon City DC chair and head of the Liberal Party who I already know. When I asked him for a nomination some months back, he just laughed out loud. “You’re not getting a nomination,” he said. “I’m not getting a nomination!”
The same Starry Lee whose “hard working” office has never once responded to any of the dozens of calls, emails or research papers on local issues I’ve raised as a voter residing in her geographic constituency in the last few years.
I genuinely love the 3 exclamation marks ...
I definitely appreciate and respect your willingness to gonzo right in the middle of it.