The election in Hong Kong this weekend was supposed to be very different.
It could have been a triumphant celebration of Hong Kongers' right to vote; their first time electing the city's leader, who for the Asian financial centre holds the apt title of chief executive.
Ten years ago, China, which has controlled Hong Kong since its handover from Britain in 1997, signalled that by this election, eligible voters would be able to choose their own leader.
Had Beijing delivered on this pledge, Hong Kong would be holding its first democratic vote for chief executive this Sunday rather than awaiting the decision of the 1194-member election committee, which is charged with selecting the winner and made up of lawmakers, businessmen and professionals, most of whom are loyal to Beijing. They are expected to back the Chinese Communist Party's favoured candidate, Carrie Lam, a long-serving bureaucrat and the former second-in-charge to unpopular current leader CY Leung.
In recent years China back-tracked on its pledge to offer universal suffrage, suggesting it would only be introduced if a Beijing-controlled committee could vet the candidates, a model that was rejected by pro-democracy activists. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in September 2014, waving umbrellas – which had become a symbol of protest – to call for greater political reform. However, despite "occupying" three key areas of Hong Kong for more than two months, their efforts were left unrewarded, as the protests petered out with the existing voting system left in tact.
And so in the countdown to election day, there was an overriding sense of anti-climax in the city this week.
"I'm afraid it's going to be very depressing for Hong Kong," says lawyer Audrey Eu, founder and former chairwoman of the democratic Civic Party. "People are becoming more politically disengaged."
Unlike in Britain and the US, where citizens, who were feeling ignored and fed up with the political establishment, shocked the world by backing a break away from the European Union and voting in a populist president, Hongkongers have limited power to vent their frustration.
"A lot of people laugh in Hong Kong and say we do have 'one man, one vote,'" says Eu. "That man is [Chinese President] Xi Jinping."
Political engagement
The so-called Umbrella Movement of two and a half years ago was a surprise to many observers. Often regarded as a pragmatic population with a focus on making money, the sight of Hong Kongers pouring onto the streets to challenge China's central government captured the world's attention. The level of political engagement was at an all-time high. On the streets, students set up homework stations, families camped out in tents, restaurants offered free food and even investment bankers started to hand out hot dogs to the demonstrators.
Anson Chan, often dubbed Hong Kong's "Iron Lady" for her steadying role during the handover when she was the No.2 official in Hong Kong, tells AFR Weekend the protests marked an important moment for the city.
"People dismiss the Umbrella Movement as a failure but I don't really see it as a failure," says Chan, who has become an outspoken advocate for democratic reforms. "If nothing else, it raised political awareness, particularly among the younger generation and it brought Hong Kong's plight to the world's attention."
For Chan it is personal because ahead of the handover she travelled extensively overseas to "put minds at ease" and assure people the agreements were in place to protect Hong Kong's economic and legal systems and way of life for the next 50 years under China's One Country, Two Systems governing approach. Now, she is dismayed by Beijing's recent moves to tighten its control over the city.
"My concern is that if the rate of deterioration continues at the same pace of the past few years, then One Country, Two Systems will exist in name only well before 2047," she says in her office in the middle of Hong Kong's bustling Wan Chai district.
At the Legislative Council building, just one subway stop away, Joshua Wong, the student activist whose angular features and bowl haircut became the face of the Umbrella Movement, is dismissive of this weekend's election. He says the result is a foregone conclusion.
"It's not an election system in Hong Kong, it's a selection system," he says to AFR Weekend.
But he also defends the achievements of the Umbrella Movement and describes the protests as one battle in a long war.
"I would not expect to have democracy in the next two or three years," says the 20-year-old, who is munching on a cheesecake and sipping an iced cappuccino at a café not far from where the protests began on September 26, 2014. "This is a long-term battle over the next two to three decades."
Opposition struggles
A lot has happened in the past few years since Wong achieved international celebrity status during the protests, at one point being considered for Time Magazine's person of the year.
The university student, who is majoring in politics at university, has been denied entry to Malaysia and Thailand, where he was held for almost 12 hours in the international airport at Bangkok. He and fellow student activists, Nathan Law and Agnes Chow, set up a political party, Demosisto, which now has a seat in the Legislative Council. Wong was too young to stand in last year's elections so that seat is held by 23-year old Law, who was one of half a dozen more radical pro-democracy activists to join the city's parliament.
Two of those have since been disqualified for not taking their oath sincerely and Law is among four others facing legal cases.
Demosisto is pushing for self-determination and Wong says more focus should be placed on what happens after 2047.
In the meantime, Hong Kong's opposition groups are struggling to form a coherent strategy.
On issues such as self-determination, Wong differs from Hong Kong's traditional democratic politicians such as Chan, who is pushing a more moderate line and urging her younger colleagues to be open to compromise.
Tim Summers, a senior consulting fellow for the Asia Program at Chatham House, says the opposition camp in Hong Kong is increasingly fragmented. "There is a tension within the opposition camp between more radical elements that have a strong and clear agenda and more moderate pragmatists, who feel it is better for there to be some progress rather than none at all," says Summers.
'A lot of soul-searching'
This division has intensified in the lead-up to the March 26 election.
Pragmatists like Eu and Chan and many of the so-called pan-democratic politicians, who sit on the election committee (they control 326 of the votes, just over a quarter of the total), have thrown their support behind rival candidate John Tsang.
The city's ex-finance secretary, who is nicknamed Mr Pringles (with his bushy moustache he resembles the snack food's mascot), has won-over public support through humour and an easygoing style.
"After five years of CY Leung, we believed we needed someone to become a unifying force," says Eu.
The problem is Beijing has thrown its weight behind Lam, despite her lagging 20 percentage points behind Tsang in popularity polls. And the Communist Party appears determined to achieve its desired result, with the top official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, Zhang Dejiang, aggressively lobbying the committee on behalf of Lam. At the last election in 2012, Beijing's candidate, CY Leung, won but only with a small majority after he attracted 689 votes. The narrow margin plagued his leadership as opposition lawmakers and protesters used the number to heckle the chief executive.
"After [the 2014 pro-democracy protests] there was a lot of soul-searching in Beijing," says Summers, who was a British diplomat for 13 years, including a posting as consul-general in the Chinese megacity of Chongqing and work in Hong Kong during the handover period.
"One view taken is that Beijing was too soft on Hong Kong and there was not enough emphasis on One Country, Two Systems. There is a concern Hong Kong is slipping away from China.
"So the desire to influence Hong Kong society is there and has grown stronger. It was expected that Hong Kong would naturally move toward China over time but the political centre of gravity has shifted away from Beijing. China's assertiveness is an attempt to pull Hong Kong back."
'Devastating impact'
Still, Summers maintains there are limits to Beijing's ability to do that and this can be seen in the shelving of a 2012 plan to introduce "national education" classes in the city as well as the public backlash over the disappearance in late 2015 of five booksellers specialising in publications banned in China. The booksellers later emerged on the mainland in detention. Earlier this year, billionaire businessman Xiao Jianhua, was also reportedly taken across to the mainland from his apartment in Hong Kong to help with an investigation. In both cases, China was heavily criticised for breaking the agreement allowing Hong Kong to run its own affairs amid growing concern about the apparent ability of its security authorities to operate freely in the city
"That strong reaction and opposition [to these two cases] shows there is a political price to pay for increased interference," says Summers.
On the other hand, Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says Xiao's mysterious disappearance has had a "devastating impact" on Hong Kong's reputation as an attractive financial centre in the region.
"The abduction of Xiao apparently in broad daylight is a flagrant violation of One Country, Two Systems," he says. "It has had a devastating impact on Hong Kong's status as the one place in China where there is rule of law and your personal safety and assets are inviolable."
Ironically, if Carrie Lam is elected, it is likely to galvanise the opposition against her government despite differences in strategy between the older and younger parties.
Wong says the various branches of the pro-democracy camp can still unite behind a common purpose.
"If we are against interference of the Communist Party and we have the common ground of seeking greater autonomy for Hong Kong, I think it's still possible for us to get cooperation on diverse issues."
