No end to Hong Kong political battle as last-ditch meeting fails

HONG KONG: Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers said on Sunday they would “definitely” veto the government’s planned political reforms after a last-ditch meeting with Chinese officials failed to reach any agreement.
The package unveiled in April for the semi-autonomous Chinese city would for the first time allow all voters to elect Hong Kong’s next chief executive in 2017.
But critics deride the proposal as “fake democracy” because it sticks to a ruling by China that candidates must first be approved by a loyalist committee.
Beijing’s restrictions, announced last August, sparked more than two months of mass rallies that brought main roads in parts of the city to a standstill late last year.
Democratic lawmakers said Sunday they had made no progress after meeting top Beijing officials in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
The meeting was widely seen as the last chance for compromise before Hong Kong lawmakers vote on the political reform package in June.
It needs a two-thirds majority to pass and pro-democracy lawmakers make up more than a third of the legislature.
“We came here... trying to find a way out of the impasse,” Civic Party leader Alan Leong told reporters after the four-hour meeting, which was attended by 14 out of 27 pro-democracy lawmakers as well as 40 pro-Beijing legislators and the city’s current leader Leung Chun-ying.
“We are left with an unequivocal conclusion that the Central People’s Government is not going to yield,” Leong said.