Picking The CE Is Not Our Role: District Councillor

A DAB district councillor said on Friday that it makes sense that she and her colleagues are to be stripped of their role in helping to select the chief executive in future, saying they should focus on livelihood issues instead.

Sources say Beijing's electoral reforms for Hong Kong will see all 117 district councillors removed from the election committee, even as it is expanded from 1,200 to 1,500 members.

Under Beijing's overhaul of the SAR's electoral system, the election committee is to take on the additional roles of participating in the nomination of all Legco candidates, and picking some of the council's members itself.

Asked about the changes, Kwai Tsing district councillor Jody Kwok said district councils are supposed to concentrate on livelihood and local matters, but pan-democrats have been "acting absurdly" by focusing on politics since their landslide win in the 2019 elections.

"The comments from our citizens and residents mostly is they care about their livelihoods, the economy and stability of Hong Kong. So it's not healthy for all of us or the whole atmosphere of Hong Kong to focus on the politics," she said.

"We have to divide our roles. Like district councillors they have to focus on the district matters, and for the legislative councillors, they may be focused on the bills, on the development of the political issues or something like that. But we have to clearly identify different roles in different parts of the society," she said.

But Kwok's colleague in Kwai Tsing District Council, pro-democracy member Dennis Cheung, said the planned changes to the electoral system are a regression, and the situation will go back to how it was before the handover.

He said this is clearly a reaction to the pro-democracy camp's wins in the 2019 polls.

"They are now removing our powers from the establishment to make sure we have no influence towards the higher-level policies the government take... This is the total control from the central government, and our people of Hong Kong will have no say to our representatives," he said.

Cheung said he fears that government policies will become "even more out of touch with the community" in future.

The district councillor said the pro-democracy camp will have a very hard time from now on, as they no longer have the resources or power to push for changes.

But he said the government will not have it easy either.

"The representation of the CE will even be lower than what we have today... I think the government will also have to pay the price. Whenever they make some policy, they will have no support from the Hong Kong people. It will be a very [bad] thing for Hong Kong," he said.