Hong Kong Leader's Likely Exit Is Mixed Blessing for Opposition
By KEITH BRADSHER and THOMAS CRAMPTON
HONG KONG, March 2 - The likely resignation soon of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, follows two years of dismal rankings in public opinion surveys, but is far from a victory for democracy, politicians and experts said today.
Mr. Tung has submitted his resignation to China's leaders, who are likely to accept it in the coming days, people familiar with the resignation said. Mr. Tung declined to discuss reports of his resignation when he arrived in Beijing today for a session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory group to which he was named Monday.
By stepping down now, 28 months before his term expires at the end of June, 2007, Mr. Tung could make sure that his successor is chosen by essentially the same 800-member Electoral Committee of Beijing loyalists who selected him twice to five-year terms.
The five-year terms of the current Electoral Committee members will expire on July 13. Much has changed in Hong Kong politics since their election in 2000 by 160,000 local business leaders and professionals, out of a Hong Kong population of 6.9 million people.
Newly elected members after July 13 could prove less amenable to Beijing's dictates than the current members, although a pro-Beijing majority remains fairly likely.
Lee Wing-tat, the chairman of the Democratic Party and a senior member of the Legislative Council, said in a telephone interview late tonight that the party was drafting legislation to expand considerably the number of people allowed to vote for members of the Electoral Committee. But he said the party would have great difficulty changing the committee's current membership, and acknowledged difficulty even in changing the voting rules for the next batch of members.
Pro-government parties hold a narrow majority of the legislature because 30 of the legislature's 60 members are selected by so-called functional constituencies - - mostly business associations and professionals.
"There are a lot of obstacles ahead of us," Mr. Lee said.
A half million people, many of them professionals, turned out on July 1, 2003, to protest the government's slow response the previous spring to a SARS epidemic and to denounce Mr. Tung's plan to enact stringent internal-security legislation. Mr. Tung ended up withdrawing the legislation, a humiliating defeat for him and for China's leaders, who had publicly supported the plan.
Close to a half million people rallied again on July 1 last year, the seventh anniversary of Britain's return of the former colony to Chinese rule, to call for direct elections here.
Mr. Tung submitted his resignation only after being publicly chastised by President Hu Jintao of China in December, and not in response to two years of dismal standings in polls and periodic street demonstrations calling for him to step down. Indeed, the economy here has improved in the past year and public protests have ebbed, even though Mr. Tung's standing in public opinion surveys has not improved.
Mr. Tung has been highly unpopular for years among democracy advocates with his opposition to holding direct elections, and has equally antagonized the city's influential business establishment in recent months by his inability to push through the privatization of public housing properties. But almost no one in Hong Kong politics is welcoming his likely resignation, with pro-government parties wary of his heir apparent, Donald Tsang.
Similar views were being voiced on the streets of Hong Kong today. "The manner of his stepping down shows that the system is not transparent or clear," said Giga Choi, a 35-year-old construction engineer, as he ate a lunch of noodles at a food stall in the North Point neighborhood here.
Neither of the two pro-government parties supports Mr. Tsang, the chief secretary and second-ranking official of Hong Kong who will automatically become chief executive for at least six months if Mr. Tung steps down before the end of his term in 2007. Hong Kong laws, drafted by Chinese officials before Britain returned the territory to China in 1997, call for an 800-member Electoral Committee, dominated by Beijing loyalists, to choose the next chief executive.
Mr. Tsang would likely have an edge in the committee's selection process by serving as the acting chief executive.
The Liberal Party, which represents mainly business interests here, has actively supported Henry Tang, a former member and a scion of a wealthy manufacturing family who recently became the territory's financial secretary and third-ranking official. But choosing the next chief executive now prevents Mr. Tang from gaining experience at senior levels of government.
The other big party backing the government, the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, has long been wary of Mr. Tsang precisely because of his experience, especially as a longtime colonial civil servant who was knighted for his loyalty to London.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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