I found an interesting article on the Washington Post called
“Hong Kong democracy movement loses ground in key by-election.” Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous region with
various political parties. The article essentially states that after a crucial by-election,
a pro-democracy party has lost 2 seats in Hong Kong’s legislative council. A pro-China
party which is of course anti-democracy gained seats.
This is interesting
to me because it is essentially an example of people coming together and using
democracy to get rid of democracy. Surely this means that the people voting for
the anti-democracy party are, only if tacitly, supporting democracy. This goes
to what we discussed in class in relation to the value of democracy. Do people supporting
non-democratic regimes such as China see the value of democracy when it can be
used to support their ideology? Is this somewhat hypocritical?
Link to article-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hong-kong-pro-democracy-movement-loses-ground-in-by-election/2018/03/11/8aebbac0-258b-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html?utm_term=.5f85f20eada2
https://youtu.be/PUt7oQ3HFKs
ReplyDeleteHere's another interesting case looking at the Weimar Republic, effectively the German Constitution did not restrict political parties to adhere to it.
Also the President of the Republic had emergency powers through article 48 that allowed them to deploy the military without restriction and disband government.
Fin - thanks for the article. The Hong Kong case is pretty interesting (hopefully we'll talk more about it later in the term). But is this really a case of people getting rid of democracy by democratic means? Are there other reasons why the voters might vote like this in this election?
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