Residents鈥 frustration grows as protests continue
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HONG Kong’s Occupy Central protesters were yesterday forced to call off a planned vote on their next steps — just hours before it was set to begin — a move said to be the result of differing opinions in their monthlong street occupation of key areas of the city.
Four weeks after the student-led Occupy Central began, weary protesters remain encamped across several major roads. But numbers have shrunk dramatically and the protest leaders are struggling to decide on how to keep up the illegal occupation.
The vote, which was to have been by mobile phone, had been due to take place yesterday and today to gauge opinion on what the next moves should be.
But just a few hours before voting was about to begin, protest leaders were telling reporters that they had been forced to call off the vote because of differing views on how it should be carried out.
“We decided to adjourn the vote ... but it doesn’t mean the movement has stopped,” said Benny Tai of the Occupy Central group, adding that it had been a “very difficult decision to make.”
Organizers did not rule out rescheduling the vote, but were unable to say when it might take place or what it would be about. “There have been a lot of conflicts and different opinions,” student leader Alex Chow told reporters.
The vote would have asked demonstrators how to respond to proposals offered by Hong Kong’s government in a bid to end the sit-ins, following talks last week between protest leaders and authorities.
Protesters are demanding “open nominations” for chief executive in the city’s inaugural direct election in 2017.
The government has offered to submit a report to the central government noting the protesters’ unhappiness with a decision by China’s top legislature to have an election committee to nominate candidates for the post of Hong Kong’s leader.
The government has also suggested that both sides set up a committee to discuss further political reform beyond 2017.
Frustration is growing among the city’s residents after a month of traffic mayhem caused by the protests, with sporadic clashes breaking out between police, protesters and opponents.
In the latest clashes, four journalists were roughed up by angry anti-Occupy demonstrators on Saturday evening at a counter-rally calling for the protesters to go home.
More than 1,000 anti-Occupy supporters gathered to denounce the closure of the harborfront Star Ferry pier. Many chanted slogans such as “Give me back Hong Kong” and “Clear the streets immediately” during the evening rally.
Police said a 61-year-old man had been arrested over the assaults, which the office of Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying condemned as a “savage act.”
While the Occupy Central movement is under growing pressure to decide where it is headed next, its leaders offered few insights yesterday into how they would proceed now that the vote has been scrapped.
Demonstrators said that they did not see any resolution in sight.
“I think we should think about our plan and think about whether to retreat,” protester Jo Tai said yesterday. “We can’t occupy the streets with no time limitations.”
Surya Deva, a law professor at City University of Hong Kong, said the vote cancellation showed that the Occupy Central movement’s leadership was battling a “lack of clarity.”
“It’s the disadvantage any decentralized movement faces,” Deva told AFP.
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