[ForHackernews]

The head of Hong Kong is not elected by popular suffrage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests#Backgr...

> The leader of Hong Kong, the Chief executive, is currently elected by a 1200-member Election Committee, though Article 45 of the Basic Law states that "the ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures."

The election committee is more pro-CCP than the general Hong Kong populace, and the current leader, Carrie Lam, is widely held to be a puppet of Beijing.

[peteretep]

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect that the PM in the UK is also not elected by popular suffrage. The next PM will (literally) be elected by 100,000 members of the Conservative party, not by general election. It’ll be the second time in recent memory this has happened, after Gordon Brown.

[magnusjonsson]

But people elect the parliament and the parliament electthe PM, so it's OK, there's a chain of accountability to the populace. In HK, the parliament has only 70 seats of the 1200-member committee, and only 35 of those are geographical constituents representing the people, the rest are "functional" constituencies mostly representing businesses). Laws have to be passed by a majority of the LegCo however, and the Chief Executive can be impeached by a 2/3 majority in the LegCo, so the LegCo is still very important. The main tragedy is that only 50% of the LegCo is elected democratically.

[vmlinuz]

One interesting - and HN-relevant! - point is that the current member of HK's parliament representing 'Information Technology' is one of the leaders of the pro-democracy camp, and there was a semi-viral video this week of him confronting police inside the parliament building. He is one of the few pro-democracy members among the functional constituencies, and as a Hong Kong permanent resident and IT professional, I want to make sure I get the papers sorted to vote for him in the next elections...

[thinkingemote]

third I think as May was also not elected via a general election.

[peteretep]

She was confirmed by one tho, so I was gonna let that slide