A cursed city: 323 voting

Yesterday was the 3.23 civil referendum organized by Hong Kong University’s ppvote project. I first went to the referendum’s main voting site at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) during lunch time. There was a long queue there, with people from all backgrounds and all ages. So I thought I would return. When I went there again at 8pm, the queue was even longer, much longer. People milled around. I waited 20 minutes before I could vote. No complaint.

The voting place is shabby. Just a carton box surrounding a table where I voted. And then I put the vote into a white envelope and sealed it with the tape.

I actually wanted to vote online in the morning but the site was extremely slow and so I gave up. I later learnt that the site was down because of repeated hacking from mainland (within one second the site received 1 million hits). That was also why the main polling site at PolyU had a long queue – people could not vote online or through smart phones so they swarmed the polling stations. There were only three major polling stations with the PolyU one most central in location. The latter was full of people all day long. When I left the station at 8:30pm, people were still coming, after a long day.

It was both a humbling and uplifting experience. We Hong Kong people cannot have a say in our city’s future and elect our Chief Executive, so we look to this civil referendum for a say and even that, was hard. But it has stiffened people’s will to fight back. Yesterday a total of 45,000 had voted. Voting continues today due to strong demand and the fact that hacking of the polling site has stopped a fair number of people from joining this civil referendum.

Tomorrow the 1200 strong Election Committee will cast their votes for the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong. All the rest of the Hong Kong population is barred from it. This is not an election. This is brutally taking away the rights of Hong Kong people.

And who is likely to win in this fake “election”? CY Leung, a fake and tricky guy who once commented that why Deng Xiaoping was not the first Chinese to be awarded Nobel Peace Prize, and who has long been rumored to be an underground communist member. Whether he is truly an underground communist is not important. What is important is he has been behaving like a communist who is loyal to his “motherland”, supporting suppressing freedom for the “harmony” of the city and the country. (There has been strong evidence that he advocated as a member of the Executive Council, the decision making body of the Chief Executive, for cutting short a commercial station’s license period because of its fierce criticism against government.)

It is him that the Central government has given the blessings and has been canvassing for among the small circle of 1200 members of Election Committee. So if he is elected by the small circle people, what would happen? CY Leung surely would put his “country” first before Hong Kong’s interests. And he has to reward the Central government’s help of course for putting him in the Chief Executive seat. Hong Kong is set to fall into communist control.

Since Beijing giving its signal, all the pro-mainland Election Committee interest groups, as expected, have expressed their support for Leung and a Chinese newspaper was found yesterday turning an article of a commentator from supporting neither CY Leung nor Henry Tang (another establishment camp candidate) into supporting CY Leung. How daring and unscrupulous is that?!!!! Hong Kong’s nightmare has just begun.

There is a strong feeling in the city that “White Horror” age has come. Hong Kong is back to the 1997 nightmare. I have heard people talking about selling their properties and moving overseas if CY Leung wins. Even the Election Committee members are scared. Tomorrow is the secret vote. They wonder if they will be spied on and found out if they do not vote for CY Leung. I personally heard an Election Committee member telling me about his worry. So the Hong Kong Government came out yesterday saying that they will strengthen the security in the voting venue by putting a cover on the voting box and putting in more staff for monitoring the voting.

What I know is, if CY Leung is elected, I will go to the streets with thousands of Hong Kong people.

Hong Kong is cursed. I am crying for its destiny.

I hate the communist rule which does not respect individuals’ rights and freedom and am furious at the way our Hong Konger’s rights and freedom of speech have been stamped on. One country two systems is dead. long dead.