Lawmakers pass district council reform package
Lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill to revamp Hong Kong's district councils, reintroducing appointed seats and allowing officials to monitor councillors and punish them when needed. All 88 legislators present supported the plan, which includes a vetting process for candidates and reducing the amount of seats to be chosen by the public to less than 20 percent.  In a statement, Chief Executive John Lee welcomed the bill's passage, calling it an important milestone in the government's work on improving district governance. "This legislative exercise implements the principle of 'patriots administering Hong Kong' at the district governance level to ensure that the (district councils) are firmly in the hands of patriots, and will strictly adhere to the positioning under the Basic Law to carry out advisory and services functions, make due contributions to the Government's district governance work and effectively respond to the expectations of the public," he said. Home affairs minister Alice Mak told lawmakers that the changes will set things right and strengthen the executive-led system so it can work on concrete issues for the public.  "No matter how members are returned, they'll have to go deep into the community, listen to people's views and tap the pulse for the government, allowing officials to address people's livelihood issues swiftly," Mak said. Constitutional affairs chief Erick Tsang thanked the public for supporting the reforms, referring to some 1.6 million signatures collected on the streets. New People's Party chairwoman Regina Ip said she thinks future district councillors will have a bigger mandate than British members of parliament. Merging 450 constituencies into 44 much larger ones means those councillors chosen by the people will be voted in by hundreds of thousands, she explained. Ip added that the return of appointed seats should ensure members come from different backgrounds and this ought to silence any overseas critics of the revamp. "I hope the spectrum can be as wide as possible, so that western media or politicians will not have an excuse to say that we're only allowing one voice," she said. Roundtable lawmaker Michael Tien, meanwhile, said although the new system will involve fewer directly elected seats, nobody wants to live in a place that has a high level of democracy but is "low on civilisation". The DAB's Holden Chow added that "one person, one vote" isn't the solution to all problems and having patriots running Hong Kong is a better way to achieve good governance.