20.6.97

Democracy will always be winner, says Patten

By Graham Hutchings in Hong  Kong 

AFFECTION vied with criticism, humour with regret, as Chris Patten, Governor of Hong  Kong, attended a farewell question time yesterday at the legislature, whose members are to be cast out of office by China in 10 days.

Some wished the last Governor bon voyage. Others accused him of "creating difficulties" by pushing ahead with political reforms despite opposition from Beijing.

But all appeared to revel in the by now regular opportunity of interrogating the Governor - something that was generally denied them, the press and the public before Mr Patten arrived in 1992. It is a fair guess that all were conscious of the fact that their presence in the chamber was the result of the most controversial elections held in the territory, elections devised by Mr Patten that produced a deep rift between Britain and China, and within the community itself.

Asked what he thought had been his greatest achievement in Hong  Kong, the Governor said he felt he had contributed to people's self-confidence. "I think this community is more self-confident and more prepared to stand up for itself; and I think that may be a consequence of the fact that I believe that people should be brought into the debate about their future," he said.

But he felt a sense of regret over his failure to persuade China to allow more democracy in Hong  Kong.

Alone among British colonies, Hong  Kong  was to be granted less democracy when the colonial power departed rather than more. The transfer of sovereignty "raised moral issues" because it was not being granted independence but was being handed over to a "country that has a different concept of freedom".

Mr Patten went on: "Perhaps what I would have liked to have done was, in the circumstances, impossible.

"But . . . I would have liked to convince the leaders in Beijing that there was nothing to worry about in Hong  Kong; that they could trust Hong  Kong; that they could be relaxed about Hong  Kong; that the development of democratic institutions in Hong  Kong  wasn't a question of planting British time-bombs around the community."

The suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989 had made this impossible.

"I suspect that, after Tiananmen, there was always going to be an argument about the last electoral arrangements for Hong  Kong  unless we were to do precisely what China wanted," Mr Patten said. "So maybe my ambition, my aspiration, was always likely to be dashed." His remarks, eminently reasonable to many in Hong  Kong  and the West, were in character with Mr Patten's entire governorship. During his five years in Hong  Kong  he appears often to have overestimated the power of his own advocacy, and to have underestimated the antipathy and fear his ideas of freedom and democracy generated in Beijing.

Part of the reason for this may be that he has had next to no contact with senior Communist officials. He visited China only once as Governor, shortly after he took up office. A bitter war of words followed immediately afterwards.

Asked for his views on the country, whose leaders branded him a "guilty man", Mr Patten said he was full of admiration for China's economic achievements. But he did not "feel obliged by that economic success to believe I should tiptoe with the greatest show of political correctness around all those political issues that some Chinese leaders regard as sensitive".