The Associated Press reports on electoral reform in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong’s legislature on Friday agreed to add 10 elected seats, completing a set of Beijing-backed electoral changes that critics say reinforce the territory’s undemocratic political system.
The legislators approved the proposed changes by a vote of 46-12, concluding a three-day marathon debate. On Thursday, they cleared a measure that expands Hong Kong’s leader selection committee from 800 to 1,200 people for the 2012 election cycle.
Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed government has billed the proposals as a form of democratization in the semiautonomous territory, but critics say they only beef up an electoral system skewed in favor of the Chinese government.
“This is the darkest day in the history of Hong Kong’s development of democracy,” opposition legislator Albert Chan shouted in the legislative chamber after the changes were passed.
