The 2014–2015 Hong Kong electoral reform was a proposed reform for the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election and 2016 Legislative Council election.
According to the decision made by the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) of the People's Republic of China in 2007, the 2017 Chief Executive election may be implemented by universal suffrage. The issues on how to achieve universal suffrage in the 2017 Chief Executive election became the focal point of the public debates. Most of the major political factions campaigned for their ideas on universal suffrage, including Occupy Central with Love and Peace, an advocacy group for the occupation movement, to pressure the Beijing government to implement full universal suffrage initiated by the pan-democracy camp, as well as the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, an anti-occupy central alliance formed by the pro-Beijing camp.
After the first consultation period, lasting from December 2013 to May 2014, a consultation report was submitted to the National People's Congress in July 2014. On 31 August 2014, the NPCSC decided that a 1200-member Nominating Committee based on the present Election Committee should only select two or three candidates before presenting them for a territory-wide ballot by ordinary voters, and each candidate must have more than half of support members of the Election Committee. It also decided that the 2016 legislative election would undergo no further adaptations since those proposed by the 2010 electoral reform.
On 18 June 2015, the Legislative Council rejected the electoral reform proposal by 28 votes to 8, despite many pro-Beijing legislators having left the chamber in an attempt to forestall the vote.
Background
Articles of the Basic Law The electoral method of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (CE) and Legislative Council (LegCo) has been a long debated issue in Hong Kong since the Sino-British Joint Declaration which decided the transfer of the Hong Kong sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. In the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Annex I states that the chief executive in the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) shall be selected by election or through consultations and the Legislature of the HKSAR shall be constituted by elections. The Joint Declaration stipulates that the government will be composed of local inhabitants and the elections or consultations will be held locally.
The controversy on how the electoral system of the chief executive and Legislative Council sparked during the drafting of the Hong Kong Basic Law in the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee (BLDC) during the late 1980s. In the Basic Law promulgated in 1990, it states the ultimate aim of selecting the chief executive and all members of the Legislative Council by way of universal suffrage is guaranteed respectively in Article 45 and Article 68.
After the transfer of sovereignty, the pan-democracy camp, the opposition camp in the SAR in which its ultimate goal was to fight for the universal suffrage constantly received about 60% of the popular votes in the LegCo geographical constituency (GC) elections. The annual July 1 marches launched by the pan-democracy camp which demanded genuine democracy as promised in the Basic Law also draw thousands of Hong Kong people each year.
2007 NPCSC decision Donald Tsang, the then chief executive, published the Green Paper on Constitutional Development to consult the public on the options, roadmap, and timetable for implementing universal suffrage in July 2007. A report was submitted to the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) subsequently in December 2007. Following that, the NPCSC made the decision that provides:
The NPCSC Decision rules out the universal suffrage in the 2012 CE Election and 2012 LegCo Election but on the other hand provides the possibility of universal suffrage for CE in 2017 and LegCo in 2020.
Although the pan-democracy camp protested against the decision of ruling out the 2007/2008 and 2012 universal suffrage, the Democratic Party, the flagship pro-democratic party in Hong Kong reached the agreement on the 2010 Hong Kong electoral reform which allowed minor changes to the 2012 CE election and 2012 LegCo Election.
First consultation period Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced on 17 October 2013 the immediate establishment of the Task Force on Constitutional Development headed by the Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen, and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam as members to handle the public consultation. On 4 December 2013, the Consultation Document on the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive in 2017 and for Forming the Legislative Council in 2016, entitled "Let's Talk and Achieve Universal Suffrage", was published which commenced a five-month public consultation period.
The Consultation Document set out the questions such as the size and composition of the Nominating Committee for the CE election and the size of Legislative Council, the electorate base of the functional constituencies and also number of geographical constituencies and number of seats in each geographical constituency.
The consultation period ended in May with increasingly heated debates and the Consultation Report was published in July 2014. Following that chief executive Leung Chun-ying submitted the Report by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. The public generally speculated that the NPCSC would set the framework of the electoral reform in the meeting that August.
Alternative proposals During the consultation period, there were proposals suggested by various political groups and individuals which included:
Ronny Tong's proposal Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong put forward an initial proposal for the chief executive universal suffrage in October 2013 and supported by Professional Commons legislators Dennis Kwok, Charles Mok and Kenneth Leung. The proposal suggests increasing the membership of nominating committee from the 1,200 member Election Committee to 1,514 and maintain the nomination threshold of 150 votes. Tong recommended the instant runoff voting system, which is used in Ireland, Australia, Sri Lanka, and mayoral elections in London, San Francisco, and some governors in the states of the United States, to have the elected CE who could accepted by all sectors. Tong also recommended cancelling existing law which disallows the chief executive belonging to a political party membership. Dennis Kwok suggests increasing the electorate base of the nominating committee to 1 million, which fulfils the "broadly representative" principle.
Hong Kong Democratic Foundation The think tank Hong Kong Democratic Foundation (HKDF) also sets out proposals of 2016 Legislative Council elections and 2017 Chief Executive universal suffrage on 29 May 2013.
The HKDF suggests those functional constituencies (FC) in which voting includes corporate voters to be replaced by individual votes from staff and management members of companies, organisations or institutions that are the constituent members of each FC. For the 5 District Council FC seats requiring candidates to be District Councillors, that qualification would be removed and the 5 seats be reconstituted as a territory-wide geographical constituency (TWGC). The additional one-seat added to each geographical constituency (GC) for the 2012 LegCo election should be transferred to the TWGC, so that this constituency would comprise ten seats. A further ten new LegCo seats would be added to the TWGC. Candidates for the TWGC would be required to secure a minimum of 500 nominations, 100 nominations from registered voters in each of the five GCs. In conclusion, the 2016 Legislative Council would consist of total 80 seats: 30 seats from 5 geographical constituencies; 30 seats from functional constituencies and; 20 seats from the Territory-wide geographical constituency.
There are three alternatives for the formation of the nominating committee for electing the chief executive: By direct election of registered voters electing 3 members in each of the 400 District Council sub-constituencies by the single transferable voting system. Nomination committee based on 2012 CE election committee with all corporate votes replaced by individual votes from staff and management of companies in each sector and all elected district councillors to join the nominating committee. Nominating committee formed through random selection of a statistically representative sample from all registered voters.
HKDF suggested any Chinese national who is a registered GC voter can become a potential candidate with nominations from at least of the members of the Nominating Committee (NC) or with at least 100,000 nominations from registered GC voters. All candidates once elected to be nominated by the NC have to affirm to abide by the Oath of the CE Office. After the closing date for submission of requests for nominations by candidates, the NC (e.g. jointly signed by 100 NC members) has right to evaluate the nominations for compliance with the rules after his or her declaration of candidacy and make complaint to the Electoral Affairs Commission to start a judicial process of removing the candidate. The final list of qualified nominated candidates will stand for election by universal suffrage, using the two-round system. A second round of CE elections will be held if no candidate received more than 50% of the votes and the two candidates with the highest vote count will proceed to the second round.
Scholarism Student activist group Scholarism issued a statement on 23 June 2013 stressed the necessity of civil nomination for the 2017 Chief Executive election. For the 2016 Legislative Council elections, it called for the abolition of the split voting in the Legislative Council; increase of the geographical constituency seats to about 60%; and transfer of the District Council (Second) seats to the geographical constituency. For the 2017 Chief Executive universal suffrage, it suggests letting all 3.5 million registered voters to be the nominating committee, the nomination threshold to be 100 thousand voters and allowing the chief executive to have political party membership. For the 2020 Legislative Council universal suffrage, the Scholarism suggested the abolition of the functional constituencies and increase of the membership of the LegCo from 70 to 80 seats, half of them elected by constituency-wide proportional representation and the other half by territory-wide proportional representation.
Alliance for True Democracy On 8 January 2014, the Alliance for True Democracy (ATD) released its "Chief Executive Election Plan" with the support of all 27 pro-democratic Legislative Council members. The election plan includes three channels for nomination: civil nomination, political party nomination, and nomination by the nominating committee. Civil nomination demands a candidate to secure the signed endorsement of 1% of the registered voters; political party nomination requires a political party receiving 5% or more of the total valid votes in the last Legislative Council direct election. The nominating committee shall not refuse to endorse any civil and political party nominees who meet the legal requirements, such as not less than 40 years old, has no right of abode in any foreign country; political conditions such as "love China, love Hong Kong" and "no confrontations with Beijing" are not acceptable. The Alliance also demands the abolition of the existing stipulation which disallows the chief executive belonging to a political party membership.
For the Legislative Council elections, the Scholars Group of the ATD put forward proposals for the transition toward the universal suffrage: For 2016 Legislative Council Election, the Scholars Group suggests: