Mixed Views On Make-up Of District Councils

Some district councillors on Wednesday offered mixed views on the future composition of the body, which is set to undergo an overhaul to ensure all future councillors are patriots who operate in full accordance with the Basic Law.

Chief Executive John Lee had said while there will still be a "voting element" to future council elections, there will be multiple paths to membership in future – raising the possibility that some councillors may be appointed.

On an RTHK programme on Wednesday, Kwun Tong District Council chairman Wilson Or noted that this is nothing new, and the inclusion of appointed councillors can help ensure that the body is ‘well-balanced.’

"I worked together with appointed councillors in the district council after Hong Kong returned to the motherland. The doctors, lawyers, principals, and those from the industrial and commercial sectors used their expertise to provide different views in the council," Or said.

"Their views were useful to the government, and they understood what difficulties people had."

Appointed seats had made up a fraction of district councils and were abolished in 2016.

The chairman of Sai Kung District Council, Francis Chau, said Hong Kong as a metropolis should not bring back the appointment system.

He added that having a high proportion of directly elected seats does not imply risks to national security.

"Now the factor of safety is actually very high. There's the oath-taking requirement, and councillors can even be disqualified. So I think if people are concerned that directly elected councillors could be problematic, those [mechanisms] can already deal with that," he said.