HONG KONG LEGCO ELECTIONS: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HONG KONG 001630

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EAP/CM

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/18/2018
TAGS: PGOV HK
SUBJECT: HONG KONG LEGCO ELECTIONS: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
VERSUS APPARENT REALITY

REF: (A) HONG KONG 1281 (B) HONG KONG 1272 (C) 07
HONG KONG 2855 (D) HONG KONG 1599

Classified By: CONSUL GENERAL JOSEPH R. DONOVAN FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND
(D)


1. (C) Summary and Comment: Polling suggests Hong Kong
voters are putting livelihood issues and a candidate's
ability to work with Beijing ahead of democratic reform. On
this basis, the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the
Betterment of Hong Kong, which can provide constituent
services through its stronger base in the grass-roots
District Councils, should have an advantage over the
pan-democrats. However, the word on the street suggests any
shift in seats will be small, favor the pro-Beijing camp, but
leave the democrats with enough seats to deny the government
and its allies the 2/3 majority needed to pass electoral
reforms on their own. We expect voter choices in the end
will be based mostly on candidate personalities and party
"brands", not the economy. The democrats' main hope is to
make the election a referendum on government performance and
the need for checks and balances. We've detected the first
indications that the pan-democratic camp may be ready, after
the election, to work with pro-government forces to break the
current impasse on constitutional reform. End summary and
comment.

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Pocketbook over Principles?
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2. (C) The National People's Congress Standing
Committee-approved timetable for electing both the Chief
Executive (CE) and Legislative Council (Legco) by universal
suffrage deprives the pan-democrats of their marquee issue
with the public. Hong Kong people rank the economy and
livelihood issues (minimum wage, inflation, labor rights,
discrimination, education and social welfare reform) most
important, with a Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) poll
reporting 74.8 percent of voters interested in candidates,
economic programs, versus 6.5 percent focused on universal
suffrage. This interest in bread-and-butter issues should
favor the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong
(DAB),since its broader representation at the grass-roots
District Council level gives it greater opportunities to
deliver constituent services. DAB candidate Gary Chan
Hak-kan told us that the DAB is the only party with a real
economic program aimed at younger voters (he estimates 30
percent of voters are under 30),including education, housing
and jobs. That said, no party has distinguished itself among
voters with either a detailed economic program or specific
measures to alleviate poverty. The only major party not
supporting the establishment of a minimum wage for low-paid
security guards and cleaning staff is, oddly enough, the
Democratic Party.

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...or Personality over Pocketbook?
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3. (C) Instead, the candidates are running on a mixture of
their individual appeal (professional and public service
experience, political views) as well as a rise in "branding"
for parties, with specific parties now recognized as standing
for particular goals. For individuals, again according to
CUHK polling, the qualities most sought are experience in
public service (38 percent),high educational and
professional qualifications (14 percent) and acceptability to
Beijing (11 percent). Although 58.4 percent expressed
dissatisfaction with the legislature, most Legco members whom
we expect to lose their seats at the polls will do so because
they are second on an electoral slate unlikely to win enough
votes to seat two candidates (see ref D). Universal suffrage
may not be much of an election issue, but Hong Kong
University polling finds sixty percent of voters see
individual candidate positions on political issues including
democratic development as important to their choice. With
regard to branding, a National Endowment for Democracy-funded
study conducted by the Hong Kong Transition Project (HKTP)
released August 18 shows voters looking increasingly at
parties' core positions. On the pan-democratic side, the
Civic Party has been a big winner, seen as having a fresh
approach to democratic reform and slates of experienced,
capable candidates (largely legal professionals). CUHK
Professor Ma Ngok argues people are more willing now to admit
to supporting a pro-Beijing party, bringing the DAB's
formerly low-ball poll numbers up to match the party's actual
voter strength. The growth in branding holds both in
geographic constituencies and the profession and
industry-based functional constituencies; HKTP polling shows

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allocations of voter party preferences as consistent in both.


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Grass-roots Service No Real Plus
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4. (C) If the universal suffrage issue is "settled" and the
economy trumps political reform for voters, we would expect
all parties to use the District Councils (DC),the only other
directly-elected posts in Hong Kong, as a training ground for
their younger generation. While DC experience may be useful
in learning the mechanics of running a political campaign and
answering constituents, our contacts across the board
nevertheless tell us DC service is not a particular advantage
when running for Legco. First, most candidates are DC
members, so the title alone does not distinguish a candidate.
Second, a district council serves about 17,000 residents
(potentially only a few blocks) and cannot propose
legislation, leaving little chance for a DC member to make
his or her name. Finally, Democratic Party strategist Law
Chi-kwong argues that Hong Kong people see Legislative
Councilors as an elite who should address bigger issues than
the DCs (i.e. fixing potholes doesn't get one to Legco). The
Civic Party's Tanya Chan Shuk-chong, a new face widely tipped
to win on Hong Kong Island, puts her DC membership far lower
on her list of perceived qualifications than her membership
in the Civic Party and her support for democratic
development. Given their greater prosperity than voters in
inland constituencies, Chan reckons local issues count for
less among Hong Kong Island voters.

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Referendum on CE Tsang
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5. (C) With democracy issues losing traction, and lacking a
coherent economic platform, the pan-democrats' best hope is
to make the election a referendum on Chief Executive Donald
Tsang Yam-kuen. Tsang's initially popular administration has
been battered by a series of public embarrassments, if not
outright scandals. The administration responded clumsily to
criticism that its appointment of two new layers of
non-career political appointees to government bureaus lacked
transparency and appeared to reward political allies. (Note:
The Basic Law does not require Legco approval for Executive
Branch appointments.) The administration also took flak for
Tsang's off-the-cuff announcement that Hong Kong would
provide massive reconstruction aid to Sichuan after the
administration had rejected poverty alleviation proposals for
Hong Kong supported by both political camps in Legco (ref A).
More recently, the government seemed to ignore conflict of
interest by approving a retired senior civil servant's
employment with a real estate group whose controversial
purchase of public land he had approved while in office. The
administration appears both inept in developing policy
proposals and loath to consult outside its own tight-knit
circle of professional civil servants (from which ranks Tsang
himself rose) and a few loyal appointees. The pan-democrats
use these issues to call for "checks and balances," including
their holding on to at least a third of Legco seats to
maintain their "blocking minority." This issue may lose
force for the pan-democrats following the DAB's own recent
call for a Legco review of post-civil service hiring and the
larger pro-Beijing camp's more general calls for greater
oversight over the administration.

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The Logic of Competing Slates
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6. (C) Conventional wisdom holds that the pan-democrats'
decision not to coordinate their campaigns, and particularly
the Democratic Party's decision to run multiple slates in the
same geographic constituency, was poor electoral strategy.
First, we should note that the pro-Beijing camp is just as
weak in its coordination, with Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee's
electoral slate and her former allies in the DAB at odds on
Hong Kong Island and the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade
Unions openly competing with the DAB in Kowloon East.
Second, the Democratic Party's slates, in addition generally
to protecting their incumbents (with one exception noted
below),are also often linked to the geographic appeal of
specific candidates to specific localities in the larger
geographic constituencies (upcoming septel). Finally, Hong
Kong's convoluted multiple-seat geographic constituencies
(ref D) require a slate to win a huge number of votes in
order to elect a second candidate. A candidate is more
likely to win (or lose) on his or her own merits if s/he
heads a separate slate.

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7. (C) Even given the risks of putting more than one egg in
the same electoral basket, several parties are putting either
two incumbents or an incumbent second to a newcomer on the
same slate. All parties are talking about bringing up a new
generation of leaders, but Civic Party Leader Audrey Eu
Yuet-mee and Democratic Party incumbent Yeung Sum both are
risking the number two position behind rookies. In Eu's
case, Democratic Party strategist Law and others have told us
this represents a sincere wish to support Tanya Chan, a
confidence that enough of her supporters will fear her losing
that the Civic Party will win enough votes to seat both Chan
and Eu, and at least partly because Eu might prefer not to be
in Legco anymore. For the Democratic Party, Kam is expected
to win but Yeung may well lose. DAB's Gary Chan (protect)
told us the DAB is too conservative to put a younger
candidate first. The DAB also seems willing to sacrifice
incumbent seats to guarantee their leaders return to office.
Law believes the DAB and Beijing are so keen to have Jasper
Tsang Yok-sing (recently relocated from Kowloon West) win on
Hong Kong Island and replace Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai as Legco
President that the DAB forced incumbent Choy So-yuk to run on
the same electoral slate. Given the competition for
pro-establishment votes from Regina Ip, Choy's defeat could
actually cost the DAB two Legco votes, since the Legco
President votes only in the event of a tie.

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The September 8 Question
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8. (C) Although they could potentially lose as many as four
seats, we expect the pan-democrats will retain a weak
"blocking minority" (21 votes, sufficient to prevent the
government from winning votes requiring a 2/3 majority). If
no one will "cross the aisle", continued deadlock on
constitutional reform is possible. At present, even the most
pragmatic of the democrats cannot publicly repudiate the call
for universal suffrage in 2012, despite the fact that Beijing
has explicitly ruled out that date. The Civic Party's Tanya
Chan was clearly uneasy when asked if the party could
compromise with the pro-Beijing camp, and told us she
expected the Civic Party would seek consensus among the
democrats first. Both HKTP chief Michael DeGolyer and the
Democratic Party's Law (strictly protect here and following)
told us the Democratic Party, however, was ready to
compromise. Law explained that a majority of democrats were
willing to accept a modified version of the government's
failed 2005 reform package, which would add five seats
elected from the geographic constituencies and five
functional constituency seats elected by the District
Councils. The democrats would insist only directly-elected
District Councilors (as opposed to those appointed by the
Chief Executive) would be eligible to vote. Law told us most
of the support for compromise came from the Democratic Party,
while the Civic Party was not yet convinced. His goal is for
the majority to proceed with the compromise, while the others
keep any criticism relatively moderate.
DONOVAN