Published in HKEJ ” Professional Eye” on 1 st July 2010
SC LEUNG
The Professional Commons
www.procommons.org.hk
The constitutional reform package had been endorsed by the Legislative Council and eventually weathered the storm despite severity in the form of mounting social odium. Looking ahead, will this bring about a “harmonious” environment for Government upcoming administration?
“In the absence of democracy, we have no blue sky, nor a harmonious society”. Is it just a curse from the politicians, or a reflection of worry of the people? History has proven that the preferential treatment for business that Government has adopted since the colonial era cannot effectively take care of the interests of different sectors of the society. The key reason is that the Chief Executive is not returned by universal suffrage, and the Legislative Council is dominated by privileged class in functional constituencies which utilize the split voting mechanism to seriously weaken the influence of their directly-elected counterparts. Against this background, most government policies have been tilted to the business interests, and motions beneficial to the general public with majority support of law makers are still vetoed by the functional constituencies.
The reform proposal: too weak to stem the tide
Despite the fact that the 2012 constitutional reform proposal has increased the “democratic ingredient”, the influence of five new LegCo seats nominated from District Councilors under the mandate of 3 million people is still not comparable to the traditional functional constituencies, which account for 30 seats but involve only 200 thousands people. The unfair political landscape has not been reversed. With the unfairness institutionalized and rationalized, how can we build up a harmonious society? Because business has overwhelming influence in the current malformed system, many livelihood issues cannot be dealt with using the right remedy, resulting in serious conflicts.
Housing problem always vividly reflects such confrontation between the business interest and the ordinary citizens. People just cannot understand why the Government does not regulate real estate business but allow them to fish the public. Frauds involved in small amount transactions are penalized but exploitation in millions of dollars by large developers are left unregulated. Moreover, the recent move of lowering the threshold of compulsory auction of old buildings, first and foremost, helps developers seize people’s properties. The scarcity in housing supply is intensified, as property developers are allowed to determine the amount of land supply. The Government allows developers to build “luxury housing” while turning a blind eye to housing needs of lower middle class. Last but not least, gross floor area (GFA) concession by the Government is being used by these developers to rake in money for their pocket’s sake, rather than to enhance home buyers’ living conditions. All these betoken Government’s blatant inclination toward property developers, and explain why members of the community are becoming hostile towards the collusion involving government vis-à-vis business sector.
Widening rich-poor gap: more development means lagging more behind
In Hong Kong, the business has a bigger say regarding minimum wage issue. Most employers resisted to employ the concept of “living wage” in calculation of salary, ignoring the right and dignity of citizens to have a decent way of living in this affluent society with high living standard. The Government has turned deaf ears to the difficulties of the working poor by taking a so called “neutral” stand in minimum wage and maximum working hour issues, which is equal to favor exploitation of the employees by the business employers.
“Small circle” election campaign does not necessitate a candidate to provide a serious election platform. Tsang’s platform for re-election failed to provide a vision for long-term development of Hong Kong. As a result, Hong Kong has been “behind the times” in development over a wide range of areas in the past few years. Although sustainable development has become a government mantra, the most widely used is “financial sustainability”, and social sustainability, that is, whether socio-economic development under the principles of fair justice is rarely mentioned. This is why the society cannot have a fair share of the economic prosperity, and gap between the rich and the poor is so widening. This is also a consequence of Government’s lack of vision in social development in a quest for a fair and caring society. Probably due to its lack of vision, Government’s performance on environmental issues is disappointing too. While the global focus is on the reduction of carbon dioxide emission, Tsang’s administration is still dawdling over problems-in-the-last-century regarding air pollution. As a consequence, Hong Kong is losing its competitive edge, therefore becoming more and more incompatible with its brand as “Asia’s World City”.
Democracy and Rule of Law are interdependent. Tsang’s administration fall short in the term in making law, with 40% fewer bill proposals submitted to the Legislative Council, compared with Tung’s second term of service. Also, Tsang’s era set a record high bill withdrawal for ducking social controversy, adversely affecting the socio-economic development of the city. In addition, Tsang’s administration has only enacted 2 proposals suggested by the Law Reform Commission (LRC), while leaving the other 11 unattended. In so doing, the Government disregarded LRC’s function as a mechanism that offers prompt law reform recommendations with shrewd foresight. This not only dampens the efforts being put by law practitioners, as member of various LRC sub-committees, concerning “forward looking” of law making, but also diminishes LRC’s role as one of the key components in law drafting, therefore lowering the level of social justice.
Lack of problem solving mechanism through democracy
The greatest setback in Tsang’s era is the substantial contraction of the government functions, confined to only taking care of the immediate need of a small group. The Government neither consults the members of the public nor obtains the mandate about this change in policy. We have to point out that Government policies should be accountable to the community at large, which includes the middle class. They have different needs in different stages of their life such as proper medical treatments. So it is really debatable to have in the prospective healthcare reform that deprived them of their rights of access to free public medical services. In housing policy, the Government tends to exaggerate the importance of subsidy towards home ownership scheme and pay no respect to people’s positive motive to improvement of living and upward social mobility. As more and more public services are gradually put under the umbrella of “pay by user” principle, the Government will eventually be degenerated functionally into a mere contractor.
Besides its self-contained value, democracy also has a utilitarian value in real problem solving. In the absence of a fair and open social conflict resolution system, Hong Kong has faced serious internal friction in the past ten years. In the light of this, it would be imminent for the Government to embark on establishing democratic institutions through one person one vote and universal suffrage to elect the Chief Executive and all LegCo Members, therefore obtaining the popular mandate they need to effectively deal with social problems to achieve long-term stability.
June 29, 2010
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