Our new monthly feature at Ketagalan Media, the Pan-Asian Civics roundup, summarizes key developments and other stories of interest related to democratic participation in the Asia-Pacific region. Our first feature includes dispatches from correspondents in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.
By Kevin Hsu, Judith Huang, and Lydia Siu; edited by Kevin Hsu.
HONG KONG
During a forum in Taiwan, University of Hong Kong Professor Benny Tai, one of the initiators of the Occupy Central movement, remarked that “with universal suffrage, the people of Hong Kong will be able to decide their own political destiny, including exercising the options to become independent or to form a federal government with other Chinese groups.” This speech was roundly condemned by the HKSAR government, the PRC’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xinhua News, and other pro-Beijing media.
Activists are concerned that Beijing could use the incident as additional impetus to push through new security laws under Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. Article 23 empowers the Hong Kong Legislative Council to pass laws that prohibit “any act of treason, secession, sedition or subversion” against the PRC central government in Beijing. National security legislation proposed under this article failed in 2003, after massive public protests.
So far, the only action by the HKSAR has been to issue a statement against Tai’s speech, but as one commentator noted, it is unusual for the government to “issue a statement directly in response to comments made by a specific individual”—especially as others point out, it was part of an academic forum, on a hypothetical question, outside of Hong Kong, and in Tai’s personal capacity.
Also in March, the Pan-Democrats lost two of four by-elections for seats they once held. The original legislators were dismissed for not taking the oath of office “properly” in 2016. With the loss of these seats, the opposition will find it difficult to block legislation promoted by pro-Beijing parties.
MALAYSIA
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the country’s parliament will be dissolved on April 7, in preparation for the upcoming general election. He heads the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which will face off against the Pakatan Harapan 希望聯盟—the opposition grouping led by Mahathir Mohamad, himself a former prime minister—and the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party). The election is now set for May 9, but the government body in charge of registering political parties has yet to certify the Pakatan Harapan. In response, the entire opposition coalition announced plans to compete under the logo of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat 公正黨, one of the four parties that make up the alliance.
The government recently forced through a measure to redraw electoral districts, despite objections from the opposition, which decried the action as unfair and intended to benefit the BN. Because the Malaysian electoral system is based on the British first-past-the-post method, the ruling party is able to gerrymander safe seats for its candidates.
As a result, despite receiving fewer votes than the opposition, the BN was able to gain a large majority of parliamentary seats in the 2013 election—133 of 222 seats, or nearly 60%. In that contest, the ruling party won only 47.38% of popular support, while the opposition received 50.87%.
SINGAPORE
Students at Yale-NUS college staged a rare protest on March 9, to express their unhappiness with the lack of consultation and transparency in decision-making by administrators. However, the demonstrations did not escalate into protests that were threatened for the school’s “open day,” when prospective students and their families visit the campus.
The Singapore Democratic Party, one of the country’s opposition parties, has asked for information from Facebook about whether any data of Singaporeans was harvested or requested from Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 Bukit Batok by-elections.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong suggested this week that it would not be wise to “purposely let the opposition grow bigger.”
More from Pan-Asian Civics
Future articles in this series can be found at www.ketagalanmedia.com/pan-asian-civics
