After a boisterous but highly undemocratic contest featuring feuding tycoons, dark rumors of closet communism and a host of scandals over sex, gangsters and an illegal wine cellar, Hong Kong elites on Sunday selected a wealthy, China-backed populist as the new leader of this former British colony.
Leung Chun-ying, a 57-year-old land surveyor, was chosen as chief executive after a vote by 1,132 members of a selection committee stacked with multi-millionaires and Beijing loyalists. He won a majority with 689 votes, according to official figures.
The result will bring relief to China, which lobbied hard for Leung in the last days of the race amid worries that many members of the committee might abstain and force the whole unruly process to start again in May. Beijing initially backed a rival candidate, former senior civil servant Henry Tang, but dropped him after it became clear that he was just too unpopular.
The off-script tumult of an ?election? in which only .017% of the population got to vote has strengthened a widespread feeling here that a city as sophisticated and prosperous as Hong Kong needs real elections as it struggles to find its identity as part of China and tackle a growing gap between the rich and the poor. The next chief executive is due to be chosen by popular vote in 2017.
Local media dubbed the contest as a race as between a pig and wolf, one dim, the other devious. Protesters staged a noisy rally outside Hong Kong?s harbor-front convention center as the selection committee met inside behind closed doors. They chanted slogans and waved banners in support of universal suffrage. A lawmaker, mocking the selection process, wore a pig and wolf mask and shouted: ?I am king and kingmaker.?
An online poll conducted Saturday by Hong Kong University ? in which nearly 230,000 people took part ? suggested neither Leung nor Tang has much popular support: 54% of those who voted abstained. (Leung got just 17% of the online vote, ahead of Tang at 16%). Unidentified hackers tried to sabotage the poll, organizers said.
Although only a tiny minority of Hong Kong?s 7.1 million had a vote in Sunday?s official ballot, candidates nonetheless sought to rally public support. Leung, the son of a colonial-era policeman, campaigned on issues such as housing and cast himself as a man of the people, tapping into a deep vein of anger at billionaire property developers and widening economic inequality.
Leung?s more populist approach alarmed some big real estate moguls, who have long played an outsized role in Hong Kong?s economic and political affairs. But he, too, had tycoons on his side.
Opinion polls have consistently shown Leung more popular ? or at least less unpopular ? with the general public than Tang, the son of a textile tycoon whose campaign collapsed in a heap of controversy ? and snickering ? over an extramarital affair, reports of an illegitimate child and an illegal luxury basement.
But Leung, also tainted by scandal, is deeply mistrusted by many, particularly among pro-democracy activists wary of China. They see Leung as far too eager to please Beijing and possibly even as a secret member of the Communist Party, something he has repeatedly denied.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=998796d018e283a88a62233b6d0513f8
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