I voted today. Yay!

This morning at the voting booth, North Plaza, DB

I just voted in the Hong Kong  District Council election, here in Discovery Bay, for the Islands District. I’ve voted every four years in every District Council election since the handover. There are some 452 DC seats contested by 1,090 candidates. In my experience they are fair, free and open. In 2007 I was the Campaign Chairman for Michael Leung who was going up against our representative, Amy Yeung of the Civic Party. We lost. But I bore no ill will and didn’t think anything was amiss, other than perhaps our own campaigning ability. 

The DCs are mainly involved in local issues. But they also have a vote in who makes up the Election Committee for the next Chief Executive. They are not nothing.
They comprise a greater degree of democracy today than we had under the British up to the handover in 1997.  People don’t know that, or forget it.

The proposed revisions in 2014 would have meant more DCs having more say in the Election Committee. But because the pan-Dems thought this proposal not perfect, they rejected it, and staged the Occupy Central movement instead.. And so we are where we are now. We could have been a bit further along the road, contemplating the next steps. Instead we are further back along the road contemplating the destruction of Hong Kong by millenarian juveniles. 

Turnout today is a record. People are anxious to vote after six months of turmoil. No one seems quite sure which way it will go. My fear is that it will be pro-protester, which means anti-government and anti-Beijing. You don’t have to be pro-government or pro-Beijing to find that outcome worrying. Because there could then be a flare up of violence with the protesters feeling encouraged by a positive vote.
And more of the cycle downward. Ever less slow…
I’m just  back from a thanksgiving gathering where many are optimistic. I’m not. If people think a vote for the Civic Party — which stirs up protesters with talk of independence — is the thing to do, as many did, we are in for strife, trouble and tribulation.