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SCMP Reporter

DEMOCRAT Andrew Cheng Kar-foo has played down the rift within his party, which was intensified by the vote last week against a minimum wage, a cause which he has championed.

 But the 39-year-old lawyer says the party should conduct more open debate sessions on policies to help seek a consensus.

 Mr Cheng told the Sunday Morning Post he was not surprised by the verbal fireworks over the motion to put the minimum-wage policy on the party platform at the extraordinary general meeting last Sunday.

 The motion was defeated 94 to 114.

 The vote was seen as another major battle between the party's mainstream faction and the Young Turks.

 Mr Cheng, who is the party's labour spokesman, dismissed suggestions that he had sought to make use of the minimum-wage motion as a vehicle to challenge the mainstream camp.

 He said the debate was warranted because more than 90 rank-and-file party members had made an abortive attempt to reverse the party caucus' decision to abstain in an earlier vote on the issue in the Legislative Council.

 The minimum-wage vote in Legco in April was sponsored by The Frontier's unionist representative Lee Cheuk-yan.

 Mr Cheng said he did not think the discussion on the minimum-wage issue had deviated from his original intention of trying to talk members into endorsing it as a party platform.

  He rejected suggestions that the voting down of his proposal was a defeat.

 'Although we lost in terms of the ballots we got, our superiority was that we had the courage to spark off the discussion and study within the party on a policy issue,' he said.

 'This was a victory for the whole party as it was the first such debate within any political party in Hong Kong.'  It was the first time that the party had discussed and voted at an extraordinary general meeting on whether it should include a particular policy in its platform.

 Although Cheung Man-kwong, one of the party's legislators from the conservative faction, has said that the incident, regardless of the outcome of the vote, had harmed the party, Mr Cheng did not believe it had done any damage.

 He said Mr Cheung might have formed such a view because he mistook 'harmony' for the equivalent of 'good'.

 'I think there can be more such meetings,' he said.

 'Even members within the same family will hold different views.

 'It is a healthy and necessary phenomenon.'  But Mr Cheung, of the so-called mainstream faction, said the clash had damaged the party.

 He said the problem was not about the issue of a minimum wage and no member of the party was against having an open debate.

 But what some members had objected to was the personal attacks that erupted during the debate.

 Mr Cheung said an example was a report written by the Young Turks saying the mainstream faction of the party was suppressing them like the 'June 4 Massacre'.



Young Turk minimises fallout from pay fireworks