Category: Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive says, to be eligible for canditates for the territory’s top job, one must be patriotic and competent.

Please tell me any other place where to be elected for the head of the government, the candidates being patriotic is one of the must-have conditions. It has been 9 years since Hong Kong’s handover to China and I am increasingly uncomfortable with the way the top government officials talk. Their words sound so inhuman and artifical, like that made from a political container.

It cannot be more apparent to me that a leader, first and foremost, should serve the people, and to be able to accomplish this, he or she must be competent and have the leadership. What else should matter?

It is 32 Celsius degrees – sweltering hot. It is Saturday. It is first of July. I, with thousands of others, joined the democracy marching demanding universal suffrage, on the streets of Hong Kong. I don’t think many of my friends in Hong Kong will attend the march, so I just go there alone. I took the bus from kennedy town to Wanchai, and joined the crowd there, walking for about one and a half hours to the government heaquarters in central.

People from all walks of life join in the rally. I see a man with long dirty hair hanging at the back, carrying an umbrella, and wearing a pair of broken cotten shoes, mothers and daugthers, young lovers, a man in his forty walking by himself…people are not shouting slogans at their top of voices, but there is passion and unflinching will there. “we want universal suffrage”, some shouted. quiet tears well from my eyes, strangely. i am touched by the sense of solidarity and the will to overcome barriers just to fight for things valuable in life.

I am bebating in the morning: shall I go to the rally in this unbearable hot weather, and alone? I decide to go, at the end. Because I know I would hate myself if I didn’t go. I don’t want to be a person of words only, not actions. If I believe it is people’s right to choose someone to represent them; if I believe democracy is about people being able to participate in the process of governing and decision making process; if I belive Hong Kong has been a hugely capitalist place where only businessmen’s interests are taken care of, then I should go to this democracy rally to demand for universal suffrage.

I am glad that I am in the rally.