Research Report Summary
Part I:Performance of political parties
(1) Participation and commitmen
We have reviewed the participation and commitment of the major political parties through the following major criteria: 1. Meeting attendance rate; 2. Policy formulation; 3. Bill vetting; 4. Motion debates and questions. Political parties under review include Democratic Party (DP), Civic Party (CP), Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL), League of Social Democrats (LSD), Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) and Liberal Party (LP).
Generally speaking, the DP and the CP demonstrated the best commitment to various legislative work in the 2008 / 09 legislative session, while the DAB indicated a relatively less enthusiastic participation.
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We have classified the various motions, motion-amendments and questions initiated by political parties in the 2008-09 legislative session into five major areas: 1. Political / Human Rights issues; 2. Economic issues; 3 Livelihood issues; 4. Cultural and educational issues; 5. Conservancy and Environmental issues.
On the whole, political parties with relatively strong networks at grass-root level (DAB, DP and ADPL) devoted much of their efforts on following-up livelihood issues. On the other hand, given that many of their members are professionals from urban planning and environmental protection fields, the CP put much emphasis on pursing conservancy and environmental issues. Similarly, the LP’s greater emphasis on economic issues also reflected the business and industrial background of its members.
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There is a general impression in the political circle that there exist intense rivalries and conflicts within the pro-democracy camp, while the pro-Beijing camp is a consistent political alliance with a high degree of solidarity.
Our research findings demonstrated that this general impression is not correct because the intra-camp conflict for the pro-democracy camp was not as serious as expected (inconsistent voting pattern among the pro-democracy camp is 14.1%). On the other hand, similar level of intra-camp conflict also existed within the pro-Beijing camp and the figure is not largely different to those of the pro-democracy camp (inconsistent voting pattern among the pro-Beijing camp is 12.33%).
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Part II:Performance of legislators
(1) Comparing the performance of legislators from different political affiliations
We classified the 59 legislative councillors into three major groups in accordance with their political affiliations, namely “legislators with political party background”, “legislators with organization background” and “independent legislators”.
In terms of attendance and diligence in carrying out their duties, the performance of “legislators with political party background” was the best, followed by “legislators with organization background” and “independent legislators”. These figures demonstrated that the stronger the organization supportal and scrutiny, the better the performance of legislators on handling various legislative work.
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We have compared the performance of the 29 GC members and the 30 FC members. Our research findings illustrated that GC legislators consistently outperformed FC members in various indicators of legislative participation and commitment.
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17 legislators were elected for the first time in 2008. These debutants’ levels of participation were, in general, very much on a par with the average of the whole Council. They performed better than those veterans in indicators like “participation in council meetings” and “questions”.
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Our last research report on 2004-08 legislative session illustrated the “voting-by- group” system has provided a constitutional privilege to those FC members, because they could exercise their “power of minority veto” to reject those motions that were widely supported by GC members (who politically speaking assume a relatively higher political mandate than FC members).
Our latest research on 2008-09 legislative session however demonstrated that it had became less frequent for FC members to successfully exercise this power of minority veto (the number has been reduced to 8.47% for 2008-09, when compared with over 18% for 2004-08). The decreasing number has in a certain extent reflected the disintegration of the business camp in the current legislative session, which made it more difficult for FC members to come up with a consensus position.
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Part III:Executive-legislative relationship
(1) Legislative power of the HKSAR Government
Our research findings demonstrated that the “overall legislative success rate” of the Donald Tsang administration was not satisfactory in the past 4 legislative sessions. Every year the HKSAR Government had shelved, withdrawn or postponed a substantial number of legislative initiatives (including many important and controversial policy initiatives) and failed to fully implement its “Legislative Programme” as planned at the beginning of the legislative session.
All these illustrated that the HKSAR Government encountered much difficulties when initiating policy and legislative reforms under the present “disabled” constitutional and governance systems.
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Research statistics showed that the pro-Beijing camp and the business camp remained the most important supporting force to the HKSAR Government in the 2008-09 legislative session. On the other hand, the pro-democracy legislators in general supported over 90% of bills, bill amendments and funding submissions initiated by the HKSAR Government, which demonstrated that pro-democracy camp is actually not an “opposition camp” as claimed by some government officials.
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The HKSAR Government’s expansion of the political appointment system in summer 2008 had attracted many criticisms from the public due to its mishandlings over the selection process and remuneration packages. Since then, spotlight is more searchingly focused on the performance of those newly appointed deputy secretaries and political assistants and they have eventually become a target of public criticism.
Our research findings however demonstrated that those deputy secretaries have played a significant role in handling legislative work, including explaining government policies in various Legislative Council meetings and answering questions from legislators. This illustrated the political appointees are not “nonsense” as claimed by some legislators and political commentators.
Amongst the 8 deputy directors, the Under Secretary for Food and Health Mr. Gabriel Leung outperformed his peers and showed great enthusiasm in attending panel meetings, explaining government policies and answering questions. Nevertheless, amongst the 9 political assistants, only a few of them had attended panel meetings but never participated in the meeting discussions.
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