Failed to field. That’s one way of putting it, and that’s how NHK World-Japan News puts it (October 30, 2023):
Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy party has failed to field any candidates for the December district council elections, under the territory’s electoral system that was revised in favor of pro-Beijing parties.
More than 100 members of the parties backing the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong filed their candidacy for the election before the registration period ended on Monday.
Major pro-democracy parties, meanwhile, failed to field any candidates. Among them was the territory’s largest pro-democracy group, the Democratic Party. It sought to have six of its members running for the poll.
This is like saying that a person who gets mugged on the way to the bank “failed to make a deposit.” Yes, he has failed. He just couldn’t get it together and do what he set out to do. Why? Well, not because he doesn’t know when the bank closes. Because he got mugged.
In Hong Kong, democracy has gotten mugged. It’s been beaten up, thwarted, killed thanks to the Chinese government’s outlawing of political freedom in Hong Kong in 2020 in the name of national security.
NHK notes that candidates for Hong Kong’s district councils must secure nominations from members of government-appointed committees. The people that the government appoints to these committees know that democracy is being extinguished in the new Hong Kong and that a good way to get in trouble with the Chinese state is to do any kind of democracy-enabling.
The Guardian reports that Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, commenting on the exclusion of the largest pro-democracy party from the elections, “said at a weekly news briefing on Tuesday that candidates have to respect the decisions of the people from which they sought nomination. ‘It is up to you to ensure that you can convince the person you want to convince,’ he said.”
How to explain this statement? Is Lee ignorant of how things are run now in Hong Kong? No, he knows. He’s lying. That’s the explanation.
Members of the Democratic Party and other pro-democracy parties or former parties know many people who would run for office, get votes, and function capably in office if only they were allowed to do so. They also all know how to fill out election forms, file them by deadlines, persuasively ask people for a nomination, etc. But for now at least, their knowledge, skills, and other resources have been rendered irrelevant.
