Hong Kong government has failed to tell story of new district councils well
- The administration should have shut down ‘district councils’ altogether, given that its proposal to overhaul them will face little resistance in the Legislative Council
- As it is, the government’s failure to rename and rebrand the district-level bodies has led to the criticism that the overhaul is a ‘regression’
It seems the only tool in its kit is expectation management, which basically comes down to the government letting word out of what to expect or how little to expect, so that by the time its plans are officially unveiled, the public won’t be caught by surprise.
In this case, talk of drastically reducing the number of elected seats and reintroducing appointed seats had been circulating for a long enough time. But that’s not good enough.
The government has failed to tell the story of the new district councils well. It has regurgitated the story of the old district councils, which goes something like this: separatists used district councils as a platform to promote separatism, thus turning the councils, whose sole function is to serve residents, into national security risks.
It was this package that gave the district councils more direct representation by eliminating appointed seats. It also empowered the district councils by giving them five “super seats” in a functional constituency in Legco. These changes were undone by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in 2021.
The current plan to revamp the district councils is being put forward and implemented by the Hong Kong government. In taking the district councils out of both the Legislative Council and the Election Committee, Beijing has returned them to their original consultative role; as stipulated by Article 97 of the Basic Law, district organisations are not meant to be organs of political power.
The government will choose 179 district councillors. Another 176 seats will be picked by government-appointed members of three existing neighbourhood committees in the districts: the District Fight Crime Committees, the District Fire Safety Committees and the Area Committees. The district councils will be headed by government officials in charge of municipal-level administration.
The government’s district council overhaul proposal will face little headwind in the Legislative Council. Actually, given the low political resistance, the government should have gone further and shut down the “district councils” altogether. The proposal should have come with a new name because what the government is proposing looks nothing like the district councils that people have become familiar with.
The logic behind this is understandable. For one, under the proposed system, a directly elected councillor has a much larger constituency to serve. And as we know, supermarket queues are longer when there are fewer checkout counters.
Second, less is not more. When taxpayers pay the same taxes but they have less say and there are fewer service points, it’s hard not to perceive this as a loss or a regression.
The new district councils should be called by any other name – neighbourhood committees, residents’ committees, whatever. Because it won’t be easy to turn over a new leaf with the old name and the past that goes with it.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA