reform package should be, in to build a stronger alliance to resist whatever more limited version of suffrage the Beijing and Hong Kong Executive Council offered. 1: Sub Players in the Struggle to Reform the Election of the Chief Executive 2013-14 Key Sub Players Compound Player Occupy Hong Kong with Love and and their supporters: The “Trio” Benny Tai, Kinman Chan, and Reverend Yiu-ming Chu Martin Lee Cardinal Zen Jimmy Lai 1. Achieve genuinely competitive elections for the position of Chief Executive that met international democratic standards. 2. Create “hub” to democratic parties and civil society groups 3. Create “era of civil disobedience” Moderate Democratic Parties, Functional Constituency Legislators and Groups: The Democratic The Party The Labour Party Hong Kong 2020 1. Achieve competitive elections where members of democratic parties could be nominated 2. Strengthen political parties 3. Win popular support 4. Reform the functional constituencies (Hong Kong 2020). Radical Democratic Parties: League of Social Democrats People 1. Achieve public nomination of the Chief Executive. 2. Abolish functional constituencies 3. Create enough pressure to facilitate direct action Student and NGO Groups: The Hong Kong Federation of Students Scholarism Civil Human Rights Front 1. Achieve public nomination of the Chief Executive 2. Reform functional constituencies, if not abolish them 3. Raise public awareness and encourage widespread mobilization Pro-Beijing/ Regime Mainland Government Officials: Xi Jinping and the Politburo The Hong Kong Office of the State Council Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR 1. Maintain the Central Government’s authority over HK 2.Ensure that universal suffrage does not create opportunities for the camp The Executive Council of Hong Kong: Chief Executive CY Leung Chief Secretary Carrie Lam 1. Ensure the re-election by promoting a nominating committee based on the current Election Committee 2. Maintain good relations with CCP 3. Stop OHKLP’s “occupy” plan Pro-Beijing Political Parties and Unions: Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) New People’s Party Liberal Party The Federation of Trade Unions 1. Maintain power by ensuring for the Chief Executive becomes the nominating Committee for the Chief Executive. 2. Delegitimize OHKLP and keep civil disobedience from occurring.
The final sub group among the pro-Beijing forces was grassroots organizations that emerged in late 2013, such as Silent Majority and the Voice of a Loving Hong Kong. These groups also feared the potential economic and social consequences of the proposed three-day campaign and believed OHKLP was ruining the chances of universal suffrage being actually implemented. There were doubts about how many members these grassroots organizations actually contained. Some among their members spoke no Cantonese (one of the official languages of Hong Kong). Often times these organizations paid for lunch and visits to tourist attractions for those that participated in their rallies. Their goal, nonetheless, was to show that there was popular support denouncing OHKLP, and to prevent the implementation of civil disobedience. The Founding of and Initial Steps Toward the Referendum. Benny Tai You-ting initially called for the use of civil disobedience in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, a newspaper dedicated to current affairs and financial news, on January 16th, 2013. In the subsequent week, Tai was able to launch a citywide discussion of his “Civil Disobedience as the Most Powerful of Weapons” following an interview with the online site InMedia that gained significant attention throughout Hong Kong. Alluding to the success of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the law professor contended that pro-democracy activists needed to escalate tactics to signal resolve in pursuing genuine universal suffrage. He envisioned a crowd of 10,000 people occupying the heart of Hong Kong’s financial sector, the Central District. These pro-democracy forces would peacefully resist, but would also accept being arrested as the legal consequences of their actions. It was imperative for Tai that demonstrators surrender themselves; that would give forces the moral high ground and prove that they abided by the rule of law. Tai
A student traced this discomfort surrounding around coordination between generations to state policies of the past: “In Hong Kong, for student movements, there was also a tradition that the CCP would like to establish a united front, so they would also allocate a lot of resources nurturing students who are be pro-Beijing. There has been a tradition starting in 50s, 70s. So when it came to recent years, students and alumni accuse the Executive Committee [of HKFS] of being Pro-Beijing. And that would trigger a fight. Alumni would be accused of influencing students no matter they are pro-Beijing or democracy.” The legacy of the machinations in student organizations to cultivate support for the Mainland meant that alumni on both sides of the struggle could be accused of using CCP tactics, which were deemed illegitimate. Students also resisted high levels of coordination with “old ghosts”; in order to make sure that their actions were taken seriously, and not seen as the product of intrigue. Moreover, students and NGO members began to see the Occupy Trio as closely coordinating with the “conservative” pan-democratic party politicians. The arena seemed to be “well-crafted” for the pan-democrats, and the students and NGOs wanted to push the democrats toward public nomination. Kinman Chan openly stated the Trio was moderate, and would have been happy without public nomination, so long as the final proposal met international standards. One student described Benny Tai’s strength as being his “kindness in balancing concerns,” but recognized that his pre-occupation with holding the pan-democratic camp together made him more responsive to political parties’ interests on occasion. The Trio now faced a dilemma, technically, the more radical sub players in their alliance had won the day. If they lost the moderates, not only would they lose allies who could provide public support, but also these allies were turning into detractors, which could lead to the
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