More food for the AFC.

In a move that surprised most observers of the Hong Kong scene, there have been sustained demonstrations since September 28 against authorities in a city that is frequently cited as a “poster child” of stability and prosperity.

The demonstrators are all young people – mostly university students – who are using the tactics of the “Occupy Movement”. This was launched in the US when students protested the growing inequalities in their country precipitated by the top one per cent of the populace owning most of the wealth.

In Hong Kong, what are the students protesting? After all, they are living in one of the most affluent locales in the world, where obtaining a good job would not be a problem after they graduate, as it would be for their protesting peers in the US. To appreciate their cause, one has to have a grasp of the island’s history.

Founded by the British and Chine after the Opium War of 1839-1842, Hong Kong was governed along British Westminster lines, by a Governor and a legislature, just as Guyana was, during the colonial era.

The British rule voluntarily ended in 1997 and Hong Kong reverted to China under a “dual governance” structure. Democratic rule and governance structures would be maintained in the city even though “mainland China” would have its Communist Party, selecting its political leaders, which would oversee the economy that was run along capitalist lines.

More specifically, 20 years after 1997, that is 2017, there would be elections to choose the leaders of Hong Kong. And this is what the protests are all about.

The rulers in Beijing are insisting that candidates for the elections must be vetted by a Committee that is dominated by individuals who, though from Hong Kong, have shown themselves loyal to Beijing.

The students, inspired by the tenets of liberal democracy imbibed by the traditions of their city, insist that the candidates must be chosen by a method that is much more open in this inaugural democratic election. It would be a farce, they insist, if all the seven million citizens of Hong Kong were to rubber stamp the candidates chosen by Beijing.

Where would be the “democratic” content of such a process? It would be a “selection” rather than an election. The students would have none of this.

And this is where the Alliance For Change (AFC) should come into the picture, to Guyanese following the protests of the students in Hong Kong. The AFC has consistently boasted about its “liberal democratic” credentials – but when it comes to putting their words into action, they fail ignominiously.

Let us take the selection of their presidential candidate who will lead them into the next elections. If the party were actually democratic, the members should reject, like the students of Hong Kong that the leaders present a pre-selected slate for them to choose from.

But this is precisely what has happened in the AFC. When first asked, two of their younger members, Patterson and Williams, opined that they would be proud to be able to compete to be selected as their party’s Presidential Candidate. However, even before the ink was dry on their opinion being quoted in the press, the now solitary leader Khemraj Ramjattan (upon the departure of Raphael Trotman) announced that his choice was his old “friend” from his PPP days, Moses Nagamootoo.

Nagamootoo, the Vice Chairman, was immediately endorsed by the lame-duck Chairman Nigel Hughes, who willingly accepted Ramjattan reneging on the AFC’s foundational ethnic alternation of candidates. What this did is exactly what the students in Hong Kong are protesting – making a farce of the essence of democracy by presenting a fait accompli to the voters to “choose” who would be their leaders.

The AFC is fond of encouraging Guyanese to protest for their “democratic rights”. We wonder whether AFC members would show the courage of the Hong Kong students.