Thanks to the votes of 689 people, Leung Chun-ying will be the next leader of Hong Kong. That’s not much of a mandate in a city of 7m souls. Many people have more Facebook friends. Why should anyone care about the outcome of an “election” restricted to a tiny clique of the elite? The man selected as Hong Kong’s third chief executive since it reverted to China in 1997 was vetted by an election committee of just 1,200, many of whom took their cue from Beijing.
689張選票,就把梁振英(Leung Chun-ying)送上了下一任香港特首的寶座。對一座擁有700萬人口的城市來說,這個數字很難算是代表了民意。許多人的Facebook好友都不止這些。這樣一場侷限在精英小圈子內的「選舉」,人們有什麼必要去關心它的結果呢?1997年香港迴歸中國後的第三位特首,是由一個只有1200名委員的選舉委員會選出的,其中許多委員都按北京方面的授意行事。