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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL 11 December 1984
From now to 1987
Having to accept the White Paper, my concern from here now on to 1987, is to be vigilant of the more undesirable and adversarial aspects of the proposed system. Following are but some of the more salient points to be addressed:
(a) Minimizing Inequity
The arrogant and blatant inequity in the proposed system can be restrained marginally by arrangements such as the following:
(i) Candidate who wishes to run for a seat in the Legislative Council should choose only one constituency should he or she has more than one category to choose from, i.e. if he chooses to run for nomination by a district board, then he should forsake running via the functional constituency category. Similarly, if he has several functional constituencies, he should forsake all but one.
(ii) Voters who have more than one vote to return candidates to the Legislative Council should forsake all but one vote.
(b) More Inclusive Representation
The proposed arrangements and designation of specific organizations to represent certain functional constituencies will be conducive to non-cohesion between functional groups and division within specific functional entity.
A stop-gap measure may be as follows:
(i) To widen functional categories to related professions (as in the case of Engineers) and bona fide organizations. Thus the medical functional group should be an inclusive not exclusive entity, i.e. consisting of doctors, nurses, para-medicals, dental surgeons, etc.
(ii) To widen, where possible, the electoral rolls and not limit these to membership of professional bodies, e.g. from the register of doctors and nurses and not just membership of a professional body.
(c) Restraining Multiple Representation
As functional constituencies will represent the strategic elites (i.e. professional groups and economic interests) and as the voting behaviour of the public in the coming elections is likely to be a continuation of the past in returning a large majority of candidates who are businessmen, professionals, teachers, and social workers, there is a need for government in appointing unofficial members to the Legislative Council to redress the imbalance in favour of the rest of the community. It will be unforgivable of the government to further represent these designated elite groups by appointing more lawyers, doctors, businessmen, teachers.
There are two further points which I wish to make and these relate to political participation of civil servants and the much talked-about civic education.
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It is my belief at this point in time that it will be wrong of government to permit civil servants to run for seats at district, regional, and central levels. The system of government at present takes extremely good care of the civil service, and its interests are adequately represented at central level already. The civil service as a whole does not have a political philosophy, but coupled with its vast membership, allowing it formal political participation at this stage in time will make a farce of the representative system, particularly in view of the vast majority of people and diverse interests, not necessarily economic and professional in origin, yet to be represented. It will be unacceptable to me to have civil servants running for and succeeding in obtaining seats. Even if they resign or temporarily take leave from their employment, there will be no doubt about their loyalty and source of support. At a point in time when the community is becoming aware, at last, of the lack of accountability of the civil service, to even contemplate political participation in the active sense by civil servants is premature.
Although I am against teaching civil education in a void, i.e. giving classroom (and even then, dubious) instructions without giving people an active role in the system of government, pinning our hopes of better quality and sophisticated electorate by taking senior classes (of secondary school youngsters) to meetings of the district boards, the Urban Council, the Legislative Council, etc. is self-delusionary. Be that as it may, the Urban Council has a practical role to play. In many areas of its work, the Council has contact with a vast proportion of the public. If one of the factors for restraining further development of a representative government lies in the non-awareness and apathy of the public, one of the urgent tasks which face the government is how to capture and educate the adult portion of the population and not just to educate the growing generation. In this respect, it may be possible for the Council to devolve or evolve aspects of its functions to district-level participation and that of the Council's 'consumers', i.e. the public at large. If this can be achieved, then the Council will have done the community much service in the run-up to the 1987 review. A second specific area in which I can see a lot of involvement by the Council in promoting public awareness and participation is our Library network. In developed countries, it is not unusual for public libraries to be an essential link in adult education and vocational guidance work. Similarly, I can see room for classes, special collections, work-groups, etc. to be introduced in our libraries devoted to the theme of civil education.
The 1987 Review
The White Paper has been fairly explicit on the areas to be reviewed in 1987. The 'menu' looks attractive, but nagging thoughts remain as regards the criteria and objective of the review.
For assessing the effectiveness of the White Paper's proposals, the following is but a casual pre-selection, which is by no means exhaustive:
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