Ordinary Gweilo

Phil has already had a go at this, but that’s not going to stop me.

Yesterday, Peter Wong Man-kwong (a local deputy to the National People’s Congress) did his best to defend the appointment of district councillors, a practice that was re-introduced by Tung Chee-Hwa after Chris Patten had abandoned it. He said:

“Maybe, the 55 per cent of voters opted not to vote in the election because there were no candidates they desired. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care about the society. If this group of a ‘silent majority’ chose to give up their rights or some of them who couldn’t vote because of physical disability, the government [should] represent them automatically.”

Unsurprisingly, this upset a lot of people. It’s a bizarre argument, all the more so because the government itself wasn’t democratically elected. The assumption, of course, is that government would mainly appoint councillors from the DAB who were defeated in the election, which would run counter to all known forms of democracy.

However, in truth it doesn’t really matter whether Tung Chee-Hwa appoints 100, 400 or 1,000 district councillors – it won’t make any difference. The district councils still don’t have much power to do anything, and conversely even if the Democratic Party and its allies had won every single seat they wouldn’t have been able to cause much trouble to Mr Tung.

That’s one reason why less than half the electorate bothered to turn out and vote. In fact, many of those who did vote probably knew little about their local candidates or the issues on which they were fighting. Like local elections all over the world, they were turned into a vote of confidence on the government’s performance. That verdict is in, and appointing more councillors won’t alter it one iota.

If district councils have any value, it is as a forum where local people can have their say about the issues that affect them. However, once the elections become a matter of deciding between being “patriotic” and supporting more democracy (or more crudely whether you are for or against Tung Chee-Hwa) then the local issues get forgotten. So, although most of what Wong said was nonsense, he’s probably right that “some of the defeated candidates have served in their districts for a long time and have done a lot for the community”. It’s tough, but that how democracy works. Good guys sometimes lose.