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official and sixteen unofficial members, eight of the latter being elected from a highly restricted franchise extending to some 50,000 residents. In the February, 1961, election those who bothered to register totalled 26,039 (a little over 10% more than in the 1959 ballotting, when 7,236 out of 23,584 actually cast their votes: there was in the end no ballotting in 1961). The Council legislates for the Urban Services Department of the Government and keeps an eye on the "vast housekeeping chores" of the city, as the Tiger Standard once put it.
One of the reformers has called it "little more than a sanitary board", but it has fifteen select committees specia- lising in the various educational, social welfare, medical and other functions of the Department. Last year Mr. Brook Bernacchi, the barrister and Reform Club leader, told the Council that it should either be enlarged to a proper Muni- cipal Council (as had been indicated by earlier Government statements dating back to 1946 or else “pack up". Perhaps as a result of the work of its unofficial members, the re- sponsiveness of the Government to points raised there has perceptibly increased.
Two Unusual Institutions
To overcome the gulf that in other Departments exists between the administrators and the administered the Government has fostered two unusual institutions that perhaps deserve more international attention than they have so far received. In the New Territories, the part of Hong- kong that is due to revert to China in 1997, the British authorities have at last transformed the Heung Yee Kuk from a body that directly reflected clan leaders' interests (not always law-abiding in the past) to one that more reasonably mirrors the average householders' view of affairs.
It is based on a very small franchise and it advises the District Commissioner of the Territories: it is proving to have quite independent views on such matters as land restric- tion policy, and its future development will be fraught with interest because as 1997 looms nearer the possibility arises of articulate majority opinion among the million or more people who will, on present projections, be living there at that time rebelling against the treaty obligations of the British Govern- ment-and saying to the world, in effect, that they are not chattels to be switched from one Government to another at the whim of unrepresentative rulers' decisions a century ago. But that may be unnecessarily to anticipate.
Then there are the kaifongs, another age-old Chinese institution of street residents' association redesigned for a modern purpose. The new type of kaifong association began in Shamshuipo, a suburb of Kowloon, in 1949. Today there are some 30 associations covering virtually all the urban areas
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of Hongkong and Kowloon with about 400,000 members. They have been particularly helpful to the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs in the mediation of disputes, and to the police (whose representatives attend their meetings) in tackling such problems as drug addiction and hawkers. Many of then now have women's sections and junior clubs, and their range of activity can be gauged by the fact that the thirteen Kowloon associations recently co-operated in putting up a noodle factory for social welfare purposes. Last summer a five-man kaifong delegation toured the U.K. and Europe and their prestige (they are multi-racial) is growing.
These are the instruments by which the Government hopes to keep its finger on the public pulse. But one of the persistent criticisms that contributes to the reformists' ardour is the gulf that still remains. The Government, the Standard urged on July 4, 1959, should publish its reports in Chinese as well as English: "if the current political developments in Singapore are to serve as a warning and as a guide to Hongkong, we should think in terms of expanding our public relations and information programmes for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of our population: our Chinese residents....The time is later than you think."
Another aspect of the same general complaint is the secretiveness of Government: reforms would at least mean, the China Mail said on July 14 last year, that "Government would be conducted more openly". The Standard proposed on October 28 last a 'consultative council' to provide a less dangerous vox populi than elections to the Legislative Council, and on December 20 it threw its weight behind the idea of an Ombudsman for the same purpose. Even the Morning Post found cause on November 5, 1960, to chide the Govern- ment for slowness in coming up with an official explanation of a queried decision.
The most startling instance of Government ignorance of public opinion came last year with the Football Pools fiasco. The Government decided to support a new private venture to establish this institution in Hongkong (seeing in it, no doubt, a most reliable contributor to public funds) and in- troduced legislation for the purpose. On May 19 the chair- men of the executive and supervisory committees of the kaifongs endorsed an appeal to the Government to kill the project: the Heung Yee Kuk unanimously did the same.
On the second reading of the Bill in the Legislative Council on June 1, three of the four unofficials opposed it most earnestly: the officials abstained and the Bill was thus defeated (afterwards the promoters tried to recover from the Government the HK$5 million they said they had lost in preliminary expenditure on the understanding that they had Government backing and that everything else was, therefore,
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