The next election for the Legislative Council is two years and five months away. So how come there are hundreds of large posters throughout Hong Kong trumpeting the virtues of politicians? A good question, and one that must have occurred to many people seeing gaudy posters bearing the grimacing likenesses of holders of public office.
The placards are not put up by people immediately seeking office. They bear messages from those who already sit on the Legislative Council or a district council. You know the things I mean. All over Hong Kong, posters 1 metre by 21/2 metres long are strung on roadside railings.
They commonly show a politician with a statement about what a fine person they are and a proclamation on their values or beliefs. Every Legco member of a geographical constituency is allowed to stick up 50 of the lurid proclamations in every district in their area. This explains why there are 200 placards in Tai Po, Sai Kung, Sha Tin and North District publicising the work of New Territories East Legco representative Emily Lau Wai-hing. Positioning of placards is administered under the grandiosely named 'management scheme for the display of roadside non-commercial publicity materials implementation guidelines'.
If you can understand this, good luck to you. It's all most confusing and made even more so because, while the Lands Department is responsible for giving permission for people to put up political posters, it is, for some reason, the job of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to root out illegal posters and pull them down. Clear so far? Also, the rules and regulations about who can put up posters and where were introduced in the spring of 2003 at the same time as Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen was named head of Team Clean. Part of the task of Team Clean in fighting Sars was to get rid of unsightly posters. Still with me?
One of the politicians who seems to understand the baffling rules is Choy So-yuk, an elected DAB member for Hong Kong Island in Legco and also a member of Eastern District Council. She explains that during elections candidates are allotted a specific, limited number of spaces they can hang placards.
If these are not removed 10 days after the polls, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department can tear them down and bill the candidate. However, once a politician has won a seat on either a district council or on Legco, they get to stick up a lot more posters. The reasoning behind this is that the sitting members can tell the public what they are doing for the general good. In the case of Ms Choy, she has the right to put up 10 posters between North Point and Chai Wan because of her district seat.