It’s voting season!
Hong Kong has a very strange electoral system. Basically we used to be a British colony, meaning we have retained the benefits of having some old lady’s head on a few of our old coins, Remembrance Day memorial marches, and, um, British people. Hong Kong is now part of China, meaning we have obtained the benefits of Communist cash, businesses profiting from Communist cash, and waves of tourists coming to shop with their Communist cash. It’s altogether a good deal, I think.
What this means for our electoral system is that we have moved from an undemocratic colonial system to an undemocratic post-colonial system. We cannot vote for the guy who’s in charge, called the Chief Executive (which is obviously a misleading term; “Chief Executive” sounds like a village leader with a feathered hat exposing his man-boobs through the two cut-outs on his traditional tribal vest, while shouting in a phone at a business meeting, putting his feet and his black patent leather shoes on the table, exposing something even less pleasant by virtue of his colourful straw skirt). We can however vote for our Members of the Legislative Council (MLs, a shortened term which I have just coined), the Legislative Council being our smaller, less scandalous, less powerful and less eloquent version of Parliament, as well as our Members of the District Council (MDs, a shortened term which I have just coined) (I am indeed a genius), District Council being our smaller, less scandalous, less powerful and less eloquent version of local government. No, we didn’t fail at copying the British. The British generously presented us with a half-arsed version of their electoral system when they colonised us, much like a gratuitous and gradual broken leg. We didn’t feel any pain, but when we were de-colonised we realised we were one limb short, so we went to China for some magic pills to grow that leg back but they gave us some tic-tacs instead, which admittedly made us feel better about ourselves, but when we look in the mirror we still see a shocking lack of a leg and only one arse cheek.
Yes, that is my concept of government in Hong Kong.
I was enfranchised at 18 and I believe I had one previous opportunity to vote, which I am quite ashamed to say I had surrendered. That occasion was a by-election architechted (is this even a word?) and orchestrated by a few MLs who decided to resign and stand for by-election to be re-elected to the very seats they have previously resigned from. They won the by-election, but at that time I thought, although it was legally and procedurally accurate for a by-election to be held, although voters did eventually vote them back into the Council, although it was fair that in the event of empty ML seats, by-elections should be held to fill those seats, and although this mechanism was the product of a lot of wisdom, I did not believe it was a mechanism to be abused and misused. And so in protest I surrendered my right to vote, thinking that was a smart move to lower the turnout rate so that even if they were re-elected they would not be very representative, and I proceeded to congratulate myself on being so politically sensible.
What I did not realise was that low turnout rates did exactly what I intended it to do: it made the guy who was supposed to represent me less representative. That only means that my lack of political stance, my general inertia towards politics and my firm believe in not-doing-anything-and-just-letting-problems-solve-themselves attitude would not be properly represented in the legislature. Also, I realised last night that if I was ever going to abuse a power, it would be my power to vote. Mainly because I didn’t earn that power at all: I came across it merely by trying and succeeding in not dying before the age of 18. Plus, I am Chinese, I am literate and in fact bi-lingual (tri-lingual if you count French, quad-lingual if you count German, and by “lingual” I mean I can say “hello” and pretty much only “hello” in those two languages, so fine I guess you wouldn’t count them, how Mathematically selfish of you), I am University educated (by educated I mean struggling to pass but still educated nonetheless, if by educated you mean I occasionally show up to class and occasionally listen to the dude uh what do you call them again? Professors? Unclear) and I am female. If you look at the world, what are the chances that a Chinese person would get to vote in a fair and uncorrupted election! What are the chances that a woman would get to vote! What are the chances that a Chinese woman is literate, bi-lingual and University educated, is enfranchised and understand (largely and in crude detail) what she is voting for! This free power to vote is gold and I plan to abuse it as much as I can in the future, thank you.
So anyone from Hong Kong reading this: go vote! I know the guy in your constituency probably sounds like a complete retard (one of the candidates in my constituency put flyers into our post boxes outlining his previous political achievements, focusing on two main items. 1. He ran in the city marathon last year, and 2. He once wrote to the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department complaining of canine excrement on the pedestrian bridge in our district. He reproduced the entirety of that complaint letter, which, I am not kidding, involved the term “dog shit”. Several times), but choose the better of two retards because one of them is going to represent you anyway. By voting for them you make them accountable to you, technically and in theory at least, in practise it’s probably completely different but you get to put a tick in a box! It’s always amazing to put a tick in a box.
