The majority of the district councils (DCs) deteriorated beyond measure after the election in the tumultuous year of 2019 to a level of performance that deviated drastically from their advisory and community service provision roles as stipulated in Article 97 of the Basic Law, and became a bitter pill for most local residents to swallow.
In willfully disrupting the functioning of nearly all the DCs, the political agitators who gained control of the DCs by riding on the 2019 anti-extradition campaign turned the DCs into venues for anti-government activities, including advocacy of “Hong Kong independence”. Their unforgivable misdeeds did, by allowing the devil to make work for idle hands, ruin the proper operation of the DCs and made them a sore point in the city’s history of district administration. Relentlessly, such councilors abused their positions and behaved most abrasively toward senior government officials attending the councils’ meetings, notably those from the Home Affairs Department and law enforcement agencies. In most cases, these civil servants had to vacate the meetings. Not only that, there were also district councilors using their heavily subsidized offices to serve as logistics bases for the 2019 riots.
Against this appalling background and in an attempt to bring the local-level bodies back to their role as spelled out in the Basic Law, a review of the DCs was rolled out in 2021, following the surfacing of the disastrous consequences of their radical politicization by the political agitators after the 2019 poll. Under the planned changes as approved by the Executive Council on May 2, there will be 470 seats distributed over the 18 districts — slightly down from the existing 479. Directly elected seats will be retained but adjusted downward to 20 percent (or 88 seats in total). The remaining 80 percent will be split between direct appointments by the chief executive, accounting for 179 seats, and indirect elections among district-level committees appointed by the Home Affairs Department — the Area Committee, Fight Crime Committee and Fire Safety Committee — which together will return 176 members. The threshold for successful entry to the DCs has also been altered, and will require candidates to garner nominations from three of the members of each of the three local committees in point, in addition to nominations from 50 registered voters in the constituency. Before DC hopefuls can officially become candidates with adequate nominations, they will need to go through an eligibility vetting by a review committee to be chaired by Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan Kwok-ki.
Past experience tells us that elected DC members do not necessarily work harder than appointees. It follows logically that effective local governance cannot be guaranteed by expanding the directly elected category. What definitely will be most decisive for the quantity and quality of DC-based neighborhood support and life-enhancing services pertains strictly to the caliber and dedication of the councilors who need to be passionate for the motherland and the HKSAR, regardless of their routes of entry to the municipal-level bodies
After the proposed revamp, the DCs will no longer elect their chairpersons from among members. Instead, the district officers deployed by the government to oversee district administration will chair the DCs. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu stressed that the district officers stationed in the respective districts they serve will invariably be government officials most knowledgeable about the socioeconomic environment and the associated administrative challenges in the districts. By significantly improving the authorities’ lack of direct involvement and leadership at the district level when policies are rolled out, this chairing arrangement will indeed be able to draw on the advantage of the district officers’ neutrality in working with DC members who might belong to groups and parties with different political inclinations. The authorities have also proposed removing from the DCs the power to handle the approval process for district-level funding allocations, in a bid to guard against any abuse of power by district councilors and remove conflicts from perceived unfairness over party line considerations.
In Lee’s view, the changes to the DCs as proposed are both imperative and pressing, in order to tie district administration in with the established aims to improve the effectuality of district-level governance under the principles of executive-led and patriots-led governance, as well as abidance by the Basic Law and mandatory national security protection. The reform measures will also enable the reconstituted DCs to take an overall perspective and interest in resolving problems and issues cropping up in the districts from time to time. On the understanding that Hong Kong residents lived through but still firmly remember the traumatic experience of 2019, the new regime for the DCs is considered capable of providing the best pathway to substantially increased care for livelihood matters in all municipalities. Public institutions should never become resistant to crucial changes if they are to truly defend citizens’ well-being.
While handfuls of opposition elements here and overseas still indulge in dreams of regaining ruinous manipulation of the legislature and the DCs, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region authorities have acted fast to squash such seditious possibilities by initiating a response to one of the four hopes of President Xi Jinping for the city — improving governance to pave the way for socioeconomic development and livelihood betterment. Past experience tells us that elected DC members do not necessarily work harder than appointees. It follows logically that effective local governance cannot be guaranteed by expanding the directly elected category. What definitely will be most decisive for the quantity and quality of DC-based neighborhood support and life-enhancing services pertains strictly to the caliber and dedication of the councilors who need to be passionate for the motherland and the HKSAR, regardless of their routes of entry to the municipal-level bodies. In this respect, the authorities are rightly considering the introduction of a performance monitoring system for DC members.
The author is a member of the Chinese Association for Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.