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AFC newsletter(7)
Performance of FC councilors are FAR WORSE THAN GC ones
In the City Forum being held on last Sunday, poor performance in the Legislative Council of Vincent Fang (LP-Wholesale & Retail) has been pointed out by Kenneth Chan, Secretary General of the Civic Party. With his rate of absent from voting at 31.5%, he is one of the highest Functional Constituencies Councilors with such figure, higher than all representatives from Geographical Constituencies.
According to the 2008-09 report from Catholic Monitors on Legislative Councilors, the average rate of absent from voting is 21.51%, almost two times higher than councilors from Geographical Constituencies (10.94%). Within FC, David Li (Independent-Finance)has reached the highest figure of all at 88.6%! Most of all, FC representatives have been doing less than that of GC ones in terms of initiating motions, amendments, making speeches and asking questions.
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Total and average number of motions, amendments, speeches and questions Legislative Councilors in year 2008-09 (Average in brackets ) |
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Motion and Amendments |
Speeches |
Questions |
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Geographical Constituencies |
153(5.3) |
967(33.3) |
363(12.5) |
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Functional Constituencies |
79(2.6) |
632(21.1) |
248(8.3) |
With reference to council meetings on Wednesdays, only 4 out of 29 Geographical Constituencies councilors have received demerits by the report findings (Note 1) while 18 of 30 Functional Constituencies councilors have received demerits! If representatives elected through direct elections had under-performed their duties, voters can vote them out of the office in next election. However, public accountability has gone in the wind among FC councilors and they can continue to be uncontested with poor track record. This is the deadlock which quality of council meetings cannot be improved.
We have to abolish such political system AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
Note 1: Any satisfaction of the following parameters would be considered as demerit-1) Absent from the meeting more than 20% of scheduled meetings, 2) No motion or amendments made, (3) Absent from voting for more than 25% provided with presence in all meetings and (4) Questioned for less than 5 times plus made speeches for less than 10% from 105 issues arisen in ordinary meetings.