Felt sorry for the extremely old and frail campaign workers handing out election leaflets, so I now have promo materials for Judy Chan (of Regina Ip’s New People’s Party) and Jeremy Young (Liberal Party) running in HK Island West. And we have a possible answer to the question: what sort of platform do you adopt in an all-patriots election in which all candidates must be pro-government?
Judy’s slogan is ‘Family-friendly, encouraging childbirth’. This sounds facile, but it does give her an opportunity to differentiate herself. Specifically, she urges the relaxing of restrictions on single women using assisted reproductive technology – which actually puts her at odds with official government policy. Or it would if she hadn’t made sure to say ‘explore the relaxing of…’ She also calls for tax breaks for families that hire foreign domestic helpers, which is amusingly inane. The focus on fertility and children squeeze out any thoughts she might have on the other 99% of issues.
The ‘pro-business’ party’s Young spouts vacuous slogans like ‘underpinning economic pillars’, ‘unleashing Hong Kong’s potential’, and ‘committing to economic transformations’. No mention of what these actually mean (are they even compatible with one another?) and certainly no hint of actual policy proposals. Nothing on (say) tackling the budget deficit or abandoning outdated thinking on land prices, tourism and ‘hubs’. But he does mention safeguarding national security, which Judy – to our horror – has overlooked.
Within just a few weeks, medal-winning fencer girl Vivian Kong has gone from a humble PR assistant at the Jockey Club to rumored possible LegCo candidate to ‘considering’ running in the Tourism functional constituency to attending a high-profile photo shoot with industry figures to appearing on the ballot. Apart from a very brief glimmer of uncertainty about her Canadian passport, it was one of the smoothest- and fastest-ever entrances to Hong Kong ‘politics’.
A clue as to what’s going on: China Daily carries plenty of glam-pics. As does the Standard. The other candidate – an actual tourism guy of some sort and district council member called Marco Ma – must be wishing he hadn’t bothered. The Tourism constituency has only 170-odd voters, all of them organizations rather than humans…
According to sources, Kong secured more than 10 nominations from the functional constituency, including support from Regal Hotels, Miramar Group, and Guangdong Holdings, along with Election Committee nominations from violinist Yao Jue and Josephine Tsui Mei-wan.
But perhaps there are hopes that her fame as a former Olympic champion will encourage wider interest in an otherwise not-very-compelling election.
From AFP via HKFP – one outgoing lawmaker and a few commentators lament the rubber-stamp nature of the all-patriots body…
The city had two decades of spirited opposition politics, which took off in the final years of British colonial rule and grew into a pro-democracy coalition in the 2010s before being wiped out.
“(Nowadays) a lot of the speeches have an echo chamber effect… The culture is monotonous, and those who are relatively lively have given up re-election,” said Kenneth Chan, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Departing legislators have cited reasons such as age and party strategy.
More than a dozen lawmakers declined to be interviewed by AFP.
You would be doing your readers a kindness, and not depriving us of anything actually newsworthy, by not wasting electrons posting anything to do with LegCo unless it’s very funny.
My understanding is under the functional constituency system a certain ratio of lawmakers are allowed to hold a foreign passport. And I thought this is why Vivian Kong is going the FC route, but she’s giving up her foreign passport anyway? Why?
So she can run for geographical constituencies next time? So she can prove she’s a true patriot instead of the instant noodles type?
Can you reclaim a renounced Canadian passport in the future like you can UK passports?
Gotta love how all of these so called patriots who love their motherland so much always have a foreign passport, meanwhile regular Hong Kong people who oftentimes don’t have a second passport aside from BNO are completely shut out from the political system aside from symbolically voting in candidates pre-screened by the CCP.
One does have to wonder WTF the Swordswoman knows about tourism…let alone politics.
@Mark Bradley
Saying and doing are two different things in the Workers’ Paradise.
“Toots” Kong is not as popular with ordinary folk as they imagine. On her return from the Olympics she immediately tditched fencing and jumped on bandwagons, like a Miss Hong Kong winner, hanging out with tycoons.
A lot of tax payer money had gone into her training and remuneration as an elite athlete.
There is greater community respect for athletes like Cheung Ka Lok and Siobhain who behaved with modesty and stayed the course.
Factor in that ‘yellow’ voters would never support her, her chances for a geo seat were slim even if the annulment of her Canadian passport had been expedited.
That Perry Yiu of China Travel was shunted off to an Election Committee seat to facilitate her candidacy shows that talent and experience are incidental to gaining a seat in a functionial constituency where expectations would be that the Legco representative has at least a modicum of expertise in the operaions of the sector.
Re Mark’s question “Can you reclaim a renounced Canadian passport in the future like you can UK passports?”, the answer is, as long as she’s still a citizen, she can just get a new passport. Takes about 10 days to get one in HK.
“Renouncing a passport” is an almost-meaningless gesture.
@Mary Melville
To be fair to Toots, talent and experience are utterly superfluous to performing the sole duty of a LegCo “representative” — obediently doing exactly what the government told you to do.
I think Vivian Kong is a “fit bird”.
““Renouncing a passport” is an almost-meaningless gesture.”
In Hong Kong for Legco I think they require you show proof of renouncing your citizenship. With the UK it’s possible to reclaim your citizenship even after renouncing it. I wonder if it’s the same with Canada.
And it’s my bad for stating renouncing passport when I should have more accurately stated renouncing citizenship since that is what I meant and that is what is required under the law.
They sound desperate:
https://x.com/kjoules/status/1985694414334017841
Joel Chan
@kjoules
The Travel Industry Council has urged Hong Kong travel agencies to persuade customers to reschedule their short-haul trips across the border so they don’t miss the LegCo election on December 7
“With the UK it’s possible to reclaim your citizenship even after renouncing it. I wonder if it’s the same with Canada.”
Nope.
@someone – she has a degree in International Relations from Stanford, so we can assume she does know something about politics at least.