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Hong Kong's Legislature-in-Waiting

Andrew Wong presides over a meeting of Hong Kong's elected Legislative Council, scheduled to go out of business with the handover to China.

HONG KONG

In the quiet stateliness of the domed Legislative Council building, beneath a classical pediment bearing the royal arms and the figures of Mercy and Truth, Andrew Wong, the council's president, looked across his posh office at a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and explained in British-accented English the difficulties of presiding over a chamber heading for dissolution in 83 days.

"If we finish the job, we finish the job," he said, sounding somewhat weary. As for the queen's likeness, he added: "I'll take it home."

Not far away, on the 10th floor of a run-down office building, the president of "the other legislature" works with a few staff members behind a glass door that bears only her name: "The Office of Mrs. Rita Fan." She dares not add her title or anything else that might reveal this office as the nerve center for Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed legislature-in-waiting.

Banned from Hong Kong, where advocates of democracy consider it an illegal gathering, this rival legislature meets across the border in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Opponents have threatened to challenge it in court if it tries to operate here before China takes control of Hong Kong on July 1 and the current legislature is abolished. They have the tacit backing of Chris Patten, Hong Kong's acerbic British governor, who has deemed it "a rather odd debating society that meets on occasional Saturday mornings."

Rita Fan, president of the incoming Beijing- appointed legislature.

"If the Hong Kong government has this unwelcoming and rejecting attitude, it is best that we do not operate here," Fan said in an interview. "It does cause us some inconvenience. But for a smooth transition, this is a small price to pay."

For most of its 150 years as a British colony, Hong Kong was run by a British governor appointed by London and a few handpicked advisers from the local business community; the Legislative Council rubber-stamped government initiatives and added a public veneer of democracy and accountability to what was basically a benign colonial dictatorship. That began changing in the mid-1980s and changed definitively in 1995, when the number of directly elected seats was increased, more people were allowed to vote, and party politics became more pronounced.

This small territory of 6 million people now finds itself faced with an anomaly: After decades in which its legislatures were largely symbolic, and then a brief experiment with a democratically elected one, Hong Kong has not one legislature but two.

"People have been using the analogy of a company being taken over, and you have two boards of directors -- one in waiting, the other sitting," said Wong, one of 33 current lawmakers also serving on the replacement body. Here, Wong said, "the trouble originated from the not-so-clear-cut resolution of the takeover by the two mother companies."

Of all the decisions China has made regarding the change of sovereignty, none has evoked more anger and international condemnation than the move to abolish the elected legislature and replace it with an appointed one. The Legislative Council -- or Legco, as it is commonly called here -- has emerged as a potent symbol of democracy in Hong Kong. To many here and abroad, China's decision to abolish Legco is seen as proof of that Communist nation's intention to wipe out any vestiges of democracy and dissent.

A survey last month by Hong Kong Baptist University found that 48 percent of Hong Kong residents thought Legco would better protect their rights, while only 4 percent said the same of the Chinese-appointed body. Thirty-nine percent were opposed to the provisional legislature, and 58 percent thought Beijing's panel is less representative than the current body.

In its annual report on Hong Kong released last week, the State Department said "China's decision to create a provisional legislature raises serious concerns. . . . The process for choosing a provisional legislature was not based upon an open and fair election, and did not produce a legislature that reflects the broad representative will of the people."

China's decision to abolish Legco is the issue most likely to spark street demonstrations here during the handover ceremonies July 1, and the protests could mar what Beijing leaders project as a glorious celebration of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. Some nightmare scenarios include dismissed legislators locking themselves in their offices or hundreds of supporters surrounding the domed legislature building in the heart of the city's business district, turning it into a symbol of defiance and perhaps forcing a police crackdown in front of thousands of television cameras.

Ng Ching-kwok, the senior assistant police commissioner in charge of the handover events, said: "Our contingency planning takes into consideration all of these possibilities." He said preparations have included sending a training officer to Atlanta during last year's Olympics, where "we learned a lot from the American police in the way they deal with passive protests."

The provisional legislature is not to be sworn in at the Legislative Council building July 1 but at a heavily guarded convention center, to avoid confrontations with protesters.

It was Hong Kong's last election, held in 1995 over China's vehement objections, that raised passions on both sides of the border and led to the current legislative stalemate.

After Patten instituted electoral changes that made the election more democratic than any held previously in Hong Kong, the Democratic Party won a plurality of seats, despite China's last-minute lobbying campaign for pro-Beijing candidates.

Officials in Beijing said the election violated treaty agreements and the legislature would have to be thrown out as soon China took control here. To replace it, China named the 60-member provisional legislature, made up exclusively of pro-China politicians, many of them candidates defeated in 1995.

Fan, the provisional legislature's leader, said the body "is a bone of contention because . . . our governor, Mr. Patten, has told various audiences in the West that the provisional legislature is a threat to democracy, that they have replaced a democratic legislature elected by a million people with one appointed by 400." But, she said, "that is only one-half of the coin.

"The provisional legislative council was established as a result of the British side breaking the promise, or understanding, that they had with the Chinese government," she said, citing what Beijing says was a pledge by London to leave Hong Kong's electoral arrangements intact in the years before the handover. "The Chinese and British have all along been operating on different wavelengths."

Various officials, including China's chief executive for Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, have said elections for a new legislature will be held within one year, after new voting rules are drafted.

The campaign has already begun. Democratic Party leader Martin Lee and other party officials have been touring the United States and Canada for the last month, raising thousands of dollars before legal changes that take effect July 1 prohibit fund-raising overseas.

Meanwhile, some pro-Beijing legislators are already expressing quiet anxiety about having to face the voters next year after having been painted as the devils who collaborated with China.

"If the accusations or allegations made by the Democrats turn out to be true -- that this provisional legislature is just a body controlled by Beijing to change Hong Kong's laws and to pass Draconian new laws -- then obviously we make ourselves into enemies of the people," said Tsang Yok-sing, a prominent pro-China lawmaker. "But if people are by and large happy with the role of the new government, then perhaps we may be at an advantage, because we will have the advantage of being incumbents."

Some provisional legislators acknowledge, however, that their panel already is being charged with some tasks unpopular with most of Hong Kong's people. They are being told to follow China's lead in changing civil-liberty laws and to approve new electoral rules that will roll back the changes made by Patten.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company