Leong a long shot for top Hong Kong post

As he hailed passers-by on a busy street here Tuesday, shaking hands and smiling while volunteers gave out leaflets, Alan Leong looked just as though he was campaigning in a real election.

In fact, none of the people listening to Mr. Leong have a vote, and the candidate doesn't stand a chance of implementing any of the policies he advocates. Leong is running for Hong Kong's Chief Executive, and he knows he is bound to lose Sunday's election because the 796 worthies allowed to vote in it overwhelmingly support the Beijing-backed incumbent, Donald Tsang.

But his presence on the Causeway Bay pedestrian precinct last Tuesday was historic nonetheless, Leong insisted. For the first time ever, a candidate without Beijing's blessing is contesting Hong Kong's top job. That, he hopes, will put fresh wind in the sails of democracy activists who have made little headway in recent years.

"We don't hope to win this rigged election," he said in an interview between bouts of pressing the flesh. "But we do hope we are paving the way to win a free election next time."

By taking part in the third Chief Executive election since China regained sovereignty over the former British colony 10 years ago, Leong has made Hong Kong's lack of democracy the central campaign issue, forcing Mr. Tsang to promise remedies. Skeptics doubt, though, that he will be able to easily win Beijing's approval for any quick moves to universal suffrage, given the Communist Party's fears that such ideas might spread throughout the mainland.

Leong is scarcely the kind of man to take to the barricades at the head of an "Orange Revolution"-style push for democracy. A well-heeled lawyer with a taste for matching pink silk ties and pocket handkerchiefs, he has no quarrel with the Hong Kong constitution's stipulation that progress toward democracy must be "gradual and orderly."

Nor is Tsang anything like a typical Chinese communist apparatchik, despite having been handpicked by Beijing to lead Hong Kong. A devout Roman Catholic, he was made a Knight of the British Empire for his services to the Crown as a colonial civil servant. As Beijing's anointed candidate, he cannot fail to win when the 796 delegates, mostly selected by corporatist vested interests, vote on Sunday.

For that very reason, some well-known pro-democracy leaders have refused to back Leong's quixotic venture into top-level politics. "The whole thing is a farce," snorts Emily Lau, a veteran legislator from the Frontier Party. "It is not an election. It is not for real, and it should not be treated as if it is for real."

Other democratic activists, however, say Leong's doomed campaign has served a larger purpose by obliging the chief executive, for the first time, to defend his policies in public and to answer unrehearsed questions from ordinary citizens in two televised debates, watched by 2 million people, that have proved to be the highlights of the campaign.

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