AFC newsletter(8)

No promise has been made to abolish Functional Constituencies in the latest proposal!

Henry Tang, the Chief Secretary of Administration, has attended the ordinary meeting of the Legislative Council in all in a sudden a few days ago as to announce the 2012 constitutional reform package. As expected, this proposal has marginal difference from the one in the consultation, leaving abolition of Functional Constituencies without timeframe. In addition, abolition of appointed district councilors has yet been suggested.Pan-democratic council members have expressed their disappointments, leaving them no options but to veto the proposal. Nonetheless, a number of councilors from Functional Constituencies have defended the proposal by suggesting the expansion of new functional constituencies so as to preserve the unfair political system.

Without a doubt, Functional Constituencies are products for transition of sovereignty. For reaching the 13th anniversary of handover, there is no reason to preserve this historical arrangement and let democratization reached nowhere.

What rationales would support the preservation of Functional Consistencies? Are these reasons justified?

In the debate whether functional constituencies should be abolished, there are 3 reasons, along with professional knowledge, that support preserving FC.

“Contributions”-More political power should be given to those who have great contributions on bringing economic prosperity hence social stability.

“Tax”-More political power should be given to those who have paid more taxes

“Balanced participation”-FC could ensure minorities in the society achieve ‘balanced participation’ opportunities.

Contributions

For those who support this notion, they have to answer the question: How can we measure contributions among different strata in the society? Likewise, how could be define ‘stability’ and ‘contributions’?

If we attempt to justify contributions towards prosperity and stability is made by business sector and professionals, how could we measure the standard? For instance, how can we compare contributions between housewives and fishermen/farmers? How can we justify to reject housewives from FC?

In further, modern societies are built upon division of labor and cooperation. Every member in the society has made an unquestionable influence on the prosperity and stability.

A devastating hit would be made if entrepreneurs were retreated from the city or a number of professionals were immigrated to other countries. Similarly, hits towards the economy would be obvious if postmen, drivers and cleaning workers have all called for strikes.

Political crisis had landed in the United Kingdom when civil servants had called for strikes during 1978-1979. Because of the disagreements on the government’s wages policy, workers ranging from coal truck drivers, nannies, trash cleaners, ambulance workers, grave workers etc had taken strikes consecutively in winter. As a result, the Labor government had faced a vote for no confidence. It had triggered the step-down of Labor government thus the uprising of Margret Thatcher’s Conservative government. This example has shown that the extend of contributions among every member is the society is hard to be quantified.

“Tax”

Tax paid by the taxpayers should not become the proportion to allocate political rights. If we were accepted with such principle, this would divide our society into different classes in an obvious way, hence separate ways of governance- First-class citizens who pay taxes and second-class ones, who do not pay taxes.

Moreover, taxpayers are able to earn profits are results of cooperation with other members in the society along with social capital. Taxpayers can hardly justify the amount of tax they have paid was a result of their own effort thus using such concept to allocate political rights.

There are direct tax and indirect tax in our taxation system as well. Although Hong Kong has a narrow tax base, most of the population has contributed significant proportions of indirect tax. This should not be ignored when the debate on contributions to the public finance among the public.

“Balance Participation”

The notion of ‘Balance’ has been twisted in the debate of balanced participation. Commonly, balanced participation embrace the notion of equality-equal opportunity to participate in politics and any unfair participation should be corrected. Nevertheless, such concept has been used to justify unequal political rights.

While 3.37million voters can vote for half of the seats in Legislative Council, 212 thousand organizational and individual votes can vote for another half. These 212thousand electorates have at least one more vote than that of those who can only vote for Geographical Constituencies, they can only represent interests of minorities. Should that be counted as equal participation at all?

Although some countries have designed their electoral system in a way to protect minority rights so as to achieve balanced participation, this is completely different from the one being discussed in our context! We should not weigh the chance of political participation among minorities equals with business and professionals that holds much stronger power over the prior.