Democratic Party (Hong Kong)

Template:Politics of Hong Kong The Democratic Party (民主黨) is a pro-democracy and liberal, political party in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It was established on October 2, 1994. The party is currently headed by Chairman Lee Wing Tat, and has 611 ordinary members and 29 associate members as of June 2005.

From the outset, the party supported the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China in nomine. Apart from that, the party's stance on Hong Kong's future development differs with most other parties'; that is, Hong Kong must develop more democratic institutions and preserve freedoms and human rights in order to achieve prosperity. Its stance is considered moderate compared to the radical political parties.

Over the years, the party has proposed comprehensive policies on various areas of governance through designated spokespersons. Their platform included:

• Amendment of the Basic Law to achieve more democracy and safeguard freedoms, while achieving closer economic cooperation with Mainland China.
• Protection of human rights.
• Maintain Hong Kong's status as an international finance and trade centre and improve its economic infrastructure (concrete details not given), as well as a more flexible way to control public expenditure.
• Better monitoring of public services and utilities (i.e. more accountability), and strengthened measures to protect the environment.
• More resources for education, with less vague policies.
• Reasonable (i.e. larger) share of economic achievements by the employee for the employee, and increased involvement by the Government to protect labour laws in accordance with social needs.
• Adopt measures to regulate property prices from fluctuation, and provide adequate public housing
• Increase spending on social welfare.

Historical developments

The Democratic Party was formed with the merger of the two largest pro-democracy political groups at the time, the United Democrats of Hong Kong which was formed in April 1990, and the Meeting Point which was formed in 1983. It was the first group to formally consider itself a political party in Hong Kong.

Before the reunification of Hong Kong with Mainland China in July 1997, the DP was the most popular party - following the earlier success of the pro-democracy camp in the 1991 LegCo election, the party won 19 seats in the 1995 Legislative Council (LegCo) election to become the largest party in LegCo.

The popularity of the party principally rose from its position towards the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, for which it had solemnly condemned the Chinese Government. In the run-up to 1997, with widespread sentiment of uncertainty then towards the future of Hong Kong under Chinese rule, the party supported the controversial package of political reform bought about by the last British colonial Hong Kong Governor, Chris Patten.

The party's stance conflicted with the PRC government's, which, for a while, earned the party more popularity and recognition both locally and overseas. The founder and then party chairman, Mr. Martin Lee Chu-ming, became well-known internationally in the run-up to reunification as a human rights and democracy fighter, and has won a number of international human rights awards.

The party refused to join the Provisional Legislative Council established in December 1996 in protest of its formation. As the body became the official legislature of Hong Kong SAR after reunification, the party lost all its seats in the legislature, until the first LegCo election of the HKSAR on 24 May 1998.

Under the proportional representation system which the HKSAR Government considered a better system in representing the spectrum of views of the community, the party secured 12 out of 60 seats in the first LegCo election in 1998, including 9 out of 20 seats from geographical constituencies where the party got 43% of the votes.

During this period, the party suffered from a decline in popularity. Some analysis attributed this to the increased concerns on economic issues as opposed to political ones, and the unpopular position of the party in issues such as the Right of Abode issue in 1999. In the second LegCo election two years later in 2000, the vote share of the party from geographical constituencies dropped to 35%, and the party secured 9 out of the 24 directly elected seats. Its total number of seats in LegCo remained at 12.

Meanwhile, the party was plagued with internal fragmentation, further affecting its image. LegCo member Mr. Chan Wai-yip quit the party in December 2001 following the succession of former Chairman Martin Lee by Yeung Sum, leaving the party with 11 seats in the LegCo. In April 2002, some members in the "Young Turks" camp within the party left and joined a more politically radical party, The Frontier.

The cause of such factionalism arose from the political and economic orientations of the party platform. On the political side, some "Young Turks" of the party considered that the party leaders were too eager to establish a "dialogue" with the Beijing and the HKSAR Government, and not confrontational enough vis-a-vis the authorities. Some also considered the party too "middle-class"-oriented and distant from the grass-roots on labour issues, such as proposed legislation on a minimum wage (which the party did not support).

2002 and 2003 saw a rebound in the popularity of democratic camp, largely due to the Article 23 issue, and the low popularity of the HKSAR Government headed by Mr. Tung Chee Hwa. The party benefited from its opposition standpoint, and achieved an impressive victory in the 2003 District Council election, claiming 92 seats compared with 86 in the last election in 1999.

In 2004, the popularity of other groups and individuals in the pro-democratic camp (such as members of the Article 45 Concern Group and Albert Cheng), together with the emergence of scandals of two of the party's candidates in the LegCo election this year, began to wane. As a result, the Democratic Party only won 12 seats overall, becoming the third largest party in LegCo behind the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and the Liberal Party. The tactics used by the DP to secure votes in the geographical constituency of Hong Kong Island for themselves ironically led to the defeat of another democratic camp candidate, Cyd Ho, causing further dissatisfaction among democratic camp supporters within the party.

See also

• Liberalism
• Contributions to liberal theory
• Liberalism worldwide
• List of liberal parties
• Liberal democracy

External link

• Official website (http://www.dphk.org)zh:香港民主黨