Election officials forget voters

RED-FACED OFFICIALS organized an election but forgot to include voters.

    Now candidates are madly campaigning for the job of running Hong Kong but there are no registered voters, ballot boxes or polling stations.

    "It's an utter cock-up," said one citizen.

    Voters have accused the ruling party of deliberately excluding them from the process.

    But civil servants have laid the blame on the shoulders of the election organizing team, a group nicknamed "the Small Circle elite" -- a title wryly assumed to indicate the size of members' brains.

     "It's unbelievable. There's a massive great leadership election in full swing, with hoardings, political speeches, hustings, the whole lot: it dominates the newspapers and the radio and TV news -- but no one can vote," said Alex, 43, a teacher. "If this happened anywhere else, no one would stand for it."

     Members of the Small Circle group are using a loophole in statutes such as the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration which promise universal suffrage but failed to specify a start date.

      "It's much easier to do it this way," a member of the small circle said. "Instead of asking the whole population who they want as leader, we just decide ourselves."

       However, academics are questioning the fairness of the process. "I think everyone feels uncomfortable about the fact that an election without the voters is not really an election. Worse still, all the members of the small circle are chosen by one candidate," said a lecturer from Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "It doesn't feel right."

      But a small circle member said: "Hong Kong is a primitive place, and the people are too immature for democracy. Besides, we got the power, we make the rules, so nyah-nyah sucks to everyone else."

(Editor's note: To people outside Hong Kong, the piece above may seem like satire. Sadly, it is pretty much spot on.)
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Comments

[Outraged of Tsuen Bridge Wells]

If this happened in other countries, no one would believe it. But in Hong Kong nobody thinks it is strange. Why is this? Have we all just given up hope that a sensible democratic system can be implemented? I think the Democratic Party people must have incredible guts to keep on going in a place where a plainly ludicrous and outrageous system has been put in place purely to put them down.