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party machinery and subject to party discipline and platform,
which are the essential elements to ensure accountability and
an overall sense of responsibility.
We must also acknowledge the situation that exists
with our voting public.
There are altogether 2.8 million of our population who are eligible to vote.
900,000 of them chose to register as voters for our
last round of District Board Elections, at which a total of
350,000 people (39%) voted. The highest number of votes for
one candidate was 3,802 for the urban area, and 1,728 for the
New Territories. The lowest number for a successful candidate
was 548 for the urban area and 189 for the New Territories
respectively.
In our last Urban Council election the total number of
votes cast was 127,000 (22%). The highest number of votes
recorded for a successful candidate was 9,500 and the lowest,
4,200.
With such levels of voters' participation, is there not a risk that we are thrusting the entire responsibility of
choosing our LegCo representatives onto the voting public too soon? Is it not safer to borrow some time by relying on existing representative bodies to conduct the necessary selection, while simultaneously broadening the knowledge, understanding and interest of our citizens in self-government through their participation first in local, then regional and
eventually central government.
Hong Kong has no tradition of party politics. Its
stability is very much based on the lack of adversarial
politics. The checks and balances are on the one hand provided by critics outside the government such as the media, pressure