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sense of accountability to his District Board, a District Board member cannot help being partial with his own district when the time comes for him to strive for interest.
It is also proposed in the Green Paper that District Board Chairmen should sit on the Urban Council. At present, although a District Board only holds its meeting once every two months, there are meetings of various sub-committees which make up a very heavy workload for its chairman. It will certainly add more weight to this already heavy burden if the chairman is required to join the Urban Council and shoulder the work of various committees. Similarly, he will not be able to give full play to his communication function. Therefore, a more ideal way is to invite District Board chairmen to attend meetings of the committees and play a consultative role on related matters.
As to the proposal that the Urban Council should follow the example of the Regional Council to allow District Board members to run for a seat in the Urban Council, I think it will only result in a public nuisance if we take this step. Facing two elections in every three years, the members will be weighed down with preparation work for the elections and cannot concentrate on their own work even if they want to work harder for the public. So is this a good phenomenon?
At present, a District Board is playing a consultative role while the Urban Council is a decision-making body. Although both parties show similar concern towards district affairs in respects of culture, entertainment, recreation and sports, no 'duplication of work' has ever occurred since each has different terms of reference. For instance, District Boards and the Urban Council always hold joint functions in which the former usually concentrate on publicity within their districts while the latter provides venues, staff and programme resources. In this way, their work is mostly co-operative in nature rather than duplication.
At present, District Boards can further strengthen their consultative roles in their terms of reference. It is the government's policy to consult District Boards on district affairs, but their ideas are just presented for the Government's consideration and may not be accepted. So in the future, District Boards can strengthen their consultative power in this respect. Whether accept the ideas of District Boards or not, the government should give a reasonable explanation so District Board members can understand the government's views on the ideas.
In conclusion, I am for the maintenance of the present status of District Boards and the Urban Council, but the communication work between them have to be handled by the Urban Services Department. District Boards should also step up effort in supervising the government so as to give full play to their consultative function. If Urban Councillors do not sit as ex-officio District Board members, they will be more unclear about district affairs, and, thus, cannot fully cope with the needs of various districts when formulating policies.
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MR. RONNIE M. C. WONG (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, ever since the publication of the Green Paper on the Review of Developments in Representative Government, the public has expressed divergent opinions on its content. However, people who can thoroughly and specifically analyse and discuss Chapter III of the Green Paper (i.e. on the District Boards and the Municipal Councils) are much fewer than those discussing other chapters. For those actively involved in the discussion of the Chapter, most of them are directly or indirectly related to the subject matter of Chapter III (such as District Board members, Urban Councillors and Regional Councillors etc.) As the content of Chapter III directly affects the interest of DB members and Urban and Regional Councillors, that is why most of their arguments are aimed at defending the interest of the Board/Council under which they work. What they have said are biased to a certain extent. Nevertheless, the review still has to be conducted and analysis to be made as well. But in the course of analysing the views on Chapter III, especially for those involving the conflict of interests, we have to be very cautious, have to view the situation as a whole and have to judge in an objective manner. As Sir Sze-yuen CHUNG said, 'It is quality but quantity and rationale that count.' Maybe we can adopt a negative approach, i.e. not to consider the views of those having conflict of interests in this issue, but to assess the views of those having no conflict of interests in this matter. It is because I personally feel that under the circumstances 'the spectators see the chess game better than the players.'
Now I would like to express my views on Chapter III of the Green Paper on the Review of the Representative Government. What I want to talk about is the three-tier system which comprises the Legislative Council, the Urban Council and Regional Council and 19 District Boards. As I have just mentioned before, if we view and discuss the merits and demerits of this 3-tier system from any one tier, we are, in fact, biased to a certain degree. I feel that unless we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this machinery basing on an analysis made from an objective viewpoint, we would not be able to reach a more reasonable conclusion. If we assess the operation of the whole political structure from the viewpoint of enterprise management, we would have an objective perspective. The Government is, in fact, like an enormous commercial firm. If it wants to make full use of its limited resources (manpower, machinery, economy and lands etc.) in an efficient and balanced way, the method that suits the principle of enterprise management best is the centralization of resources. And the existing pattern of the 3-tier system is also designed in accordance with the above-mentioned principle. Any contravention of the above principle, just like all the individual administrative body just bothering its own business without caring about others, would only lead to an extremely confusing, extravagant and inefficient government. So it is like a number of horses pulling a cart. I therefore feel that the existing 3-tier structure operates very well. I believe that the best and most appropriate method to assess whether a system is successful or not is by judging its achievements. Just take a look at Hong Kong's booming economy, prosperous commercial, industrial and financial sectors,