Mayoral election (1)

Finally, I witnessed the city’s historic election of her leader by universal suffrage!

  No, unfortunately I am not talking about my home of Hong Kong, where we are still clamouring for full democracy (about which I am quite pessimistic). I am in Bristol, the largest city in Southwest England. The first directly elected mayor here was inaugurated this Monday.

  For those wondering how come Bristolians had never elected a mayor by ‘one person, one vote’ before, let me explain a bit here. Currently English city governments are run under two different systems, the council leader model and the elected mayor model. While the name of London mayor Boris Johnson has been familiar to outsiders, not every city in this country has a Boris Johnson. A council leader, which Bristol used to have and some other cities still keep, is elected among city councillors, who are popularly elected by the cities’ voters. A mayor, in contrast, is directly elected by the general public.

  One may wonder: Who would reject the right to choose the person running his/her city when such a right is available to him/her? Interestingly, voters in nine out of the ten English cities which held referendums this May on whether to replace the council leader system with the mayoral system said NO.

  Bristolians were unique. They were the ONLY ones to opt for the change pushed forward by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in the May referendums.

The other nine cities were Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield.

  By now do you imagine Bristolians as politically enthusiastic and passionately about voting? Intriguingly, this does not seem to be the story told by voter turnouts. Only 24% of voters here cast their ballots in the referendum, with 53% of them saying yes. This effectively meant the city’s move towards a mayoral system was brought about by the wish of just 13% of the electorate.

  Also paradoxically, merely 28% of voters exercised their new right to choose the candidate despite it sounds exciting, at least on the surface, that people here could directly choose their political leader for the first time…  (To be continued)