Written by Nury Vittachi
FRI,05 SEPTEMBER 2014
Here comes democracy
‘If you’re not angry about this then you have no heart’
Blogger Nury Vittachi, who once served as the South China Morning Post’s history columnist, laments the sad forgotten history of promises of democracy made to the people of Hong Kong, and reminds us that the community did once have elected representatives—granted by invading Japanese soldiers
Interviewer: The Hong Kong government is telling us that we should rejoice about what is happening now, since this is the first real attempt at democracy in our history. The British gave us no democracy in 150 years, right?
Nury: No. That makes no sense. Modern democracy didn’t exist 150 years ago. We could not have had it then. The British didn’t have it themselves until the 1940s.
Interviewer: But the point remains that we didn’t get democracy from the British.
Nury: Hong Kong’s tragedy is our short memories.
Interviewer: Go on.
Nury: Hong Kong has had elections for more than 100 years. In the first public election ever held in Hong Kong, in 1888, 187 voters turned up out of 669 registered voters. The election was for seats for the Sanitary Board. The turnout was 28 percent. In the 1880s and 1890s, there were other attempts to introduce the concept of government elections. But they were largely organized by the business community and were blatantly self-serving.
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