The Hindu : Blair backs election of Hong Kong Chief Executive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 24, 2003

International

International

Blair backs election of Hong Kong Chief Executive

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE July 23. Buoyed by the news about the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons in a U.S. military raid on a house in Mosul in Iraq, the beleaguered British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, today completed his East Asia tour in a mood of transparent generosity towards Hong Kong, formerly a British colony.

An equally important political influence on Mr. Blair, as regards his perceptions of Hong Kong at this time, was the extensive briefing that he received on this subject from the highest-ranking Chinese leaders in Beijing two days earlier.

Referring to the current political unrest in Hong Kong over the local government's move to enact a tough anti-subversion law in order to integrate the territory more closely with mainland China, Mr. Blair said in Hong Kong today that "there is sufficient flexibility in the (political) system (in the territory) to allow disagreements to surface and then be overcome''.

By using the euphemism of `disagreements' to describe the current standoff between the "pro-democracy'' segments of Hong Kong's political community as also civil society, on one side, and the territory's Government, on the other side, Mr. Blair preferred diplomacy to denunciation in expressing himself on the manner in which the local authorities were handling the situation arising out of the recent `protest' rallies.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China is governed under the territory's own post-colonial Basic Law on the basis of the principle of "one country, two systems'' — autonomy or distinctive political identity for Hong Kong for a specified period prior to the territory's complete integration with mainland China.

Despite his latest general disposition to deviate from the ideological Western line and take a benign view of the manner in which the Hong Kong authorities have so far managed the "pro-democracy'' crisis on their hands, Mr. Blair did not also resist the temptation to back the idea of a direct election of the territory's Chief Executive.

One of the key demands of the protesters in Hong Kong today is that its Chief Executive should be directly elected by the people of the territory instead of being selected by the Chinese leaders in Beijing.

Mr. Blair said: "Our (British) position has consistently been that we hope that Hong Kong will make early progress towards the Basic Law's ultimate aim of election of the Chief Executive and all members of the Legislative Council by universal suffrage''.

While Mr. Blair's advocacy of real democracy camouflaged its absence in Hong Kong during the British colonial rule that ended only six years ago, he seemed to have made a good deal of comfort space as he met the territory's Chief Executive, Tun Chee-hwa, before rushing back to London a few hours ahead of schedule on account of a typhoon that was advancing towards Hong Kong itself.

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