Cardinal Zen calls for referendum to decide Hong Kong’s democracy

(19 Jan,2010): Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, called on the territory’s Christians to vote for the referendum on universal suffrage, two days after the Chinese government said that Hong Kong had no authority to launch a referendum. It is not a referendum in the proper sense of the term, but rather five by-elections that will have to be called to replace five members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, who plan to resign in late January in protest against the government’s slow pace at implementing full democracy for the Special Administrative Region.
At a forum on constitutional reform organised by Catholic and Protestant groups, Cardinal Zen urged all citizens, including Christians, to support the de facto referendum as a way to push forward Hong Kong's democracy movement. Cardinal Zen said he was angry at the local government’s political reform proposal, which offers neither progress nor any direction and gives people no choice. For several years, pro-democracy parties and the population have been pushing for the direct election of all lawmakers, but mainland China has blocked the change, postponing it perhaps until 2017.
The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, an agency of China’s State Council that manages ties between the mainland and the two special administrative regions, issued a statement on the matter, saying that the idea of a referendum in Hong Kong is fundamentally against the Basic Law agreed by China and the United Kingdom before the former British colony was returned to China.