A pro-Beijing protester tries to punch a pro-democracy demonstrator after a heated argument outside the government building in Hong Kong on April 22, 2015.PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP / Getty Images
Hong Kong's leadership offered no concessions to student activists and democracy protesters as it unveiled a final political reform package that threatens to rekindle the anger that brought hundreds of thousands to city streets last fall.
The package holds fast to the most controversial elements of earlier Chinese-backed proposals, which employ a secretive 1,200-person committee to nominate candidates for chief executive, the powerful top office in the Asian financial centre.
The committee has been slammed as beholden to Beijing's will – thereby ensuring only staunchly pro-China candidates can seek election – and unrepresentative of the modern city.
But the city's Beijing-backed leadership called it a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
"As of now, we see no room for any compromise," Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said Wednesday. "To initiate any political reform process is not easy. If this proposal is vetoed, it could be several years before the next opportunity."
Chief Secretary Carrie Lam said the package fulfills "the ultimate goal" of achieving the universal suffrage China has promised, a statement observers understood to mean that, if it is passed, future changes to the package are unlikely.
But lawmaker Alan Leong vowed that the pro-democracy camp would reject it.
"The proposal allows a 'small circle' to control the election result by controlling the nomination process. Hong Kong will become an election machine," he said.
He was one of about two dozen opposition lawmakers, most wearing yellow Xs on black shirts and some holding yellow umbrellas – a symbol of the pro-democracy protest movement – who walked out of the legislative chamber after Ms. Lam's speech.
There were some minor scuffles outside the legislature as pro-democracy protesters faced off against pro-Beijing demonstrators waving Chinese flags.
Joshua Wong, the teenage student leader who became the protest movement's most famous face, dismissed the reform package.
"Those minor adjustments raised by the government are totally useless," said Mr. Wong, 18. "We hope to have the freedom to choose rather than just get the right to elect some of the candidates."
He said that he and other members of his Scholarism group would protest on Saturday in neighbourhoods where Ms. Lam and other government officials are expected to canvas for support from residents.
The woman who is sometimes called Hong Kong's "Iron Lady" also dimissed the reform package.
"Today's very explicit statement dashes any hopes for further reforms beyond 2017," said Anson Chan, a former chief secretary turned democracy activist.
"This whole thing from start to finish has been a farce."
A group of pro-democracy lawmakers has vowed to veto the legislation, raising the prospect that the pitched rhetoric and lengthy protests of the past year will achieve precisely nothing.
In past conflicts with Hong Kong, however, Beijing has offered concessions at the last minute, so it remains possible the package will be passed in some form.
But Chan Kin-man, one of the main organizers of the Occupy movement that laid the foundations for street protests, feels Hong Kong is better to wait for China itself to become a different place than to accept an imperfect electoral system.
"You have to wait until China has to face its own social or political reform – then it might give Hong Kong people another chance of reform," he said.
Michael DeGolyer, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University, worries people won't be that patient. A veto will leave the city "stuck with the current system, which is about as bad as it gets. It's almost a guarantee that there will be upheavals that will make Occupy Central look like a kindergarten picnic. There will be real violence, not just controlled violence."
Though police cleared the last remnants of the Occupy movement off Hong Kong streets last December, the protest continues even today, with some 140 tents arranged on sidewalks around the city's legislature.
Every night, 50 to 60 people still bed down here. Once or twice a week, Thomas Hong joins them. A 57-year-old Canadian passport holder who exports ladies handbags to Europe, he spent Wednesday evening chatting inside a tent under a "Freedom Corner" sign.
"This government is rubbish," he said.
Avery Ng, vice-chairman of the League of Social Democrats party, which holds a single seat in the legislature, walked past the signs of simmering discontent.
"This shows hope. More people are awakening," he said. "People finally know that they can do something rather than giving up."
With a report from Associated Press