Public nomination shouldn't be the only way to elect CE: think tank
Allowing voters to put forward the names of chief executive candidates will be costly and hard to implement on its own, says think tank
Public nomination - allowing all voters to put forth names for the 2017 chief executive race - should not be the only nomination method, says a local think tank, after studying other democratic countries' electoral methods.
According to the Policy Research Institute, two of five countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that have a president and score higher than Hong Kong on the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2012 democracy index - France and Mexico - do not allow public nomination. The others - the United States, Chile and South Korea - run dual-track systems allowing party and public nomination.
Yesterday, the institute suggested that the public nomination method supplement party nomination, rather than for it to be the only way to put forward candidates for the city's top job.
"If public nomination is a universal value, why would other democratic countries not use it as the main way to nominate?" said honorary chief executive officer Andrew Fung Ho-keung.
The institute also found public nomination costly and difficult to implement, adding that no candidate nominated in this manner had so far won the race.
In Taiwan, presidential candidates can be nominated either by parties or by 1.5 per cent of voters.
