Guest Comments by Alan Leong

Editor's Note: The writer, a member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council since 2004, represents the Civic Party, a political group at the forefront in Hong Kong’s long battle for universal suffrage. He’s one of five legislators resigning to force Hong Kong-wide by-elections as a referendum on the need for valid universal suffrage by no later than 2012. These words of departure were written for delivery in Legco this week, but a walkout by pro-Beijing legislators removed the session’s quorum, and none of the resigning members could deliver resignation speeches.

HONG KONG -- Recently, I notified the Legislative Council Secretariat of my resignation. I first stood for election in 2004 and again in 2008 with the aim of fighting for democracy and fending off the erosion of our freedoms.

In my experience during the past five years, it has been forcefully demonstrated that the system of functional constituencies and split-voting method constitute a great obstacle to those aims, in particular, to the implementation of genuine universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive and all LegCo members. To us, “universal suffrage” must mean “universal and equal suffrage”, and that means functional constituencies must be abolished. Yet, the government has said categorically that it will not put forward any proposal to abolish functional constituencies, wholly or gradually, because the government believes that such a proposal will not be supported by functional constituency members and will not be passed.

Under our present system, so long as the government refuses to put forward proposals to advance real democracy, democratization will be stalled. A majority of directly elected members can veto a government proposal which is undemocratic, as we did in 2005. But we cannot cause democratic proposals to be introduced. The power does not lie in our hands. We have arrived at a deadlock in our system. Repeating the 2005 veto is not good enough.

I wish to make it clear that I am not resigning out of frustration or because I despair of achieving my original aims. On the contrary, I do so in the hope of breaking the deadlock, of breaking out of the box, so that democracy can go forward.

In many democratic systems of government, when an unbreakable deadlock has developed over an issue of vital public interest, the right thing to do is to go directly to the people, whether by referendum or by a general election. In Hong Kong, we do not have the legislative framework for a referendum. But my resignation, together with the resignations of four of my colleagues, will trigger by-elections in all five geographical constituencies under the provisions of our election law.

The issue we wish to put to the people is the abolition of functional constituencies as a part of genuine universal suffrage.

In the territory-wide by-election, everyone will have a vote, and every vote will count and be accorded the same value. The people will have spoken through ballot boxes. This action is lawful and constitutional.