Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a series on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s upcoming elections.
It is safe to assume that anyone who genuinely cares about Hong Kong’s future would have found no fault with the patriotism requirement for candidates running for public office after witnessing the relentless social unrest and infighting inside the Legislative Council in recent years.
The criteria for those governing the HKSAR government are simple but highly set: They must be staunch patriots with a high caliber of administrative capabilities and morality
Hong Kong’s new election system has adopted a necessary mechanism to ensure that all election candidates fulfill this most important criterion for candidacy eligibility. But this is certainly not the only criterion for eligibility screening.
Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, said at a symposium earlier this year that administrators of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must be morally and intellectually competent aside from first being staunch patriots.
The criteria for those governing the HKSAR government are simple but highly set: They must be staunch patriots with a high caliber of administrative capabilities and morality.
Administrators to be selected under the HKSAR’s improved electoral system must satisfy five specific requirements or “be exemplary in five aspects”, as elaborated upon by Xia in his speech.
These include being exemplary in fully and accurately implementing the “one country, two systems” principle throughout their administrative work; being exemplary in resolving various contradictions and problems hindering Hong Kong’s socioeconomic development; being good at doing practical things for the people and serving the people for real; being good at uniting various sectors; and being good at performing their duties with a steadfast commitment to fulfilling their responsibilities.
Over the past two decades or so, Hong Kong has been mired in endless political wrangling, thanks to the relentless efforts of the opposition camp to undermine the HKSAR government’s lawful governance, with the ultimate objective of changing the region’s constitutional order as a special administrative region of China. The political bickering initiated by the opposition camp has greatly hindered the HKSAR government’s efforts to tackle the deep-seated problems that have plagued Hong Kong people for a long time.
But some pro-establishment lawmakers’ double-faced behavior, as well as some officeholders’ incompetency, nonfeasance or even dereliction of duty, have also played a great part in undermining government efforts to tackle those deep-seated problems, such as the severe land and housing shortage, the widening wealth gap, and the stagnant social upward mobility for young people, all of which had been aggravated by the city’s unbalanced and narrow economic structure to a great extent.
In other words, those double-faced, self-serving or incompetent officeholders were not much better than their opposition counterparts in terms of contributing to the enhancement of Hong Kong society’s overall well-being.
With those five requirements for public officeholders being strictly implemented in the three upcoming elections, double-faced individuals, incompetent candidates and those who champion only narrow interests for certain sectors or interest groups are likely to be screened out of the contest, and thus out of the HKSAR’s governance structure.
When that happens, hopefully gone are the days when the HKSAR government struggles to cope with the infighting among some pro-establishment parties or groups who differ on many government policies or initiatives because of differing interests. The HKSAR government will hopefully no longer often get stuck — like a boat being pulled by boatmen in different directions — when it promotes new policies or initiatives to the legislature for the legislation process.
Being much more balanced and broadly representative, the new Election Committee will also be able to fill the office of chief executive and 40 of the LegCo seats with a chief executive-elect and legislators-elect who have the overall interests of Hong Kong society in mind, rather than that of certain sectors or quarters in the society.
In a nutshell, the improved electoral system is designed to not only ensure that all administrators of the HKSAR are genuine patriots who will steadfastly safeguard Hong Kong’s constitutional order as defined by the Basic Law. It also aims to cure all those administrative ills that have taken a toll on the HKSAR government’s governance and administrative efficiency. It will ensure the smooth operation of both of the legislature and the executive branch, as well as rebuilding a constructive executive-legislative relationship, to the benefit of the whole society.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.