Before we delve into the impact of the revamp of Hong Kong’s district councils, let’s look at how the government has failed, once again, in its public relations strategy.
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.
The district council revamp is the last piece of the electoral overhaul that began when Beijing changed both the composition of the Election Committee that selects the chief executive and the composition of the Legislative Council by amending Annexes I and II of the Basic Law. At that time, the district councils were stripped of their membership of the Election Committee and of their influence in Legco.
The Donald Tsang administration had tackled constitutional reform twice, in 2005 and 2010. The 2010 political reform proposal was the first and only one passed since the handover.
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.
It should be obvious why that was necessary. Back in the colonial era, the kaifong associations that had been established to deliver local services went into a decline following the 1967 riots, as district offices were set up instead. Later, district boards or councils were established and evolved with time.
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.
In the spirit of depoliticising the district councils, the John Lee administration has proposed that 88 of the 470 seats across the 18 new district councils will be directly elected by registered voters. District lines will be redrawn to reduce the number of constituencies from 452 to 44. Each voter will have one vote to elect two representatives in their constituency.
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.
Instead, the government’s failure to rename and rebrand the district-level consultative bodies has left them vulnerable to the criticism that they represent a “regression”. There is even talk that voters are being punished by the new system.
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