Congratulations to the Hon. Dr.
Pierre CHAN!
If election is interesting,
election by voting is more interesting.
September 4, early in the
morning, I went to cast my 2 votes for the Legco election. I was again allocated to the polling station at
the Hong Kong Park. It was not a very
much user friendly station. Actually
there were few residential blocks nearby. So it was not in actual vicinity of walking
distance. It was quite far away from the
MTR Admiralty station, though people were not expected to take public transport
before they could vote. There were a few
metered parking spaces. But the design
of the road created a bottle-neck area leading to the peak tram station and a
taxi station. So there were always taxis
and tourist buses going in and out. That
was the reason why I drove there early morning. In previous years, I could secure a parking
space if I was early enough. Voting in
the afternoon or evening would be more difficult. This year, there were many cars there already
before 9 am. My prediction that there
would be a new record for the number of voters turned out to be correct just
from my simple observation.
I waited and waited. Then I could park my car at the curb with
minimal obstruction to other traffic. Those
behind me were not as lucky. One of the
many police officers wandering around immediately came to me and asked why I
parked my car illegally-by-definition there. I told him: “I have to cast my vote.” I left without caring what he was going to do
to my car, or to me when I returned. I
reminded my friends to plan how they were going to the polling stations by
describing my experience. They teased me
whether I had asked if the police officer knew who I was. That was quite an infamous quote used not too
rarely by famous people. I was no famous
person. But if I did say so, I would
tell the officer that I was among the most power people in Hong Kong. I am one of the citizens of Hong Kong.
To exercise my power, I had 2
votes. The vote for Functional Constituency
Election was simple. I got one vote, and
there was only one seat. No matter how
many candidates there were, I needed only to choose the one whom I wanted to
represent me. The majority won. However, the vote for Geographical
Constituency Election was not as simple. I got only one vote, but there were a total of
35 candidates assorted in 13 lists. And
there were 6 seats. The dynamic behind
was very complicated. By no means I
could choose my favorite 6 candidates to fill the 6 seats. I would then worry that if all my friends
shared my view and chose the same candidate as mine, the other 5 seats might go
to those candidates we wanted least to represent us. Our second and third choices might receive 0
vote in extreme cases. A natural
tendency would be to evenly distribute votes among friends and family members to
the 6 candidates of our choice, or at least to focus on 2 to 3 candidates
instead of one. Then how about other
votes who shared similar beliefs but did not know each other? Could there be a common platform where people
could refer to and vote smartly? This
year, the ThunderGo arose out of such demands. This was an ultra-complicated system to
allocate votes. Many, candidates and
voters alike, blamed the plan as lacking transparency and making things worse. I wonder there was any way to evaluate or
ascertain the usefulness of the system, as there was no way to know what the
results would have been without the system in play.
The ThunderGo was new, but large
scale vote allocation was nothing new. Many
people treated it as a fact that there existed one or more strong organizations
that could master the results of elections. It was not enough to move voters, they could
orchestrate voters. They were experts in
planning and executing vote allocations. It is the norm in some developing countries to
orchestrate voting. Farmers, elderly and
less educated people are mass-transported to polling centers to fit in the
jigsaws. In Hong Kong, the conductor was
in superb advantage in the District Council (Second) Functional Constituency
Election where 2 million voters were going to elect 5 members with one vote
from each voter. Theoretically, the
results of elections should be easily fixed with high confidence interval. However, election results were as unpredictable
as the stock market. Even with the power
of a wealthy country and acting-out-of-the-box interventions, manipulation of
the stock market was as good as coaching a bad lover.
This year, the Legco Election
result was unpredictable to me. And I
wondered if there was anyone who could foresee it. If the mastermind behind was so powerful and
resourceful, why couldn’t it halo all the candidates it blessed? Some blamed the ThunderGo. Some gave credit to CY. The controversial disqualification of 6 potential
candidates by the Electoral Affairs Commission might add fuel to the opposite
camp. Whether the dropout of a near-zero-support
candidate served as a straw could be a good research subject. The final day strategic dropout of 5
pro-democratic candidates was surly significant, especially for the District
Council (Second) Functional Constituency. But on the other “hand”, there were trucks
loaded with loyal voters. Employers and
employees of large companies were mobilized. Even civil servants were given hearty
reminders of how to vote. Government
officials appeared on TV repeatedly and stated their opinions of how to vote,
not unlike speculators of the stock market.
This was a beautiful
demonstration of gestaltism. The whole
had a reality of its own. I guessed the
aforementioned factors did affect the result. But butterfly effect was more important. Hong Kong played Chuck Close and painted an
interesting picture with each citizen, voters and non-voters inclusive. It was a question of chicken and egg, that
whether a city deserved bad rulers when citizen so chose not to vote, or to be
truck-loaded to vote. But you never knew
whether our oldies were wise enough to ignore the numbers written on their
palms, and exercised their free wills.
People usually refer to these as
collective wisdom. I like the term
collective karma more.
(Source: HKMA News September 2016)
