Will this Legislative Council election give us a group of politicians who will fight for a better quality of life for Hong Kong people? Only if they take up difficult issues. The legislators elected on Sunday will have to contend with the people's top concern - inflation and, also, gradually increasing dissatisfaction with the government. A key source of a sense that 'something is not right' is that the government's vision of the future is, in fact, the formula of the past. Competing with mainland cities and others is not articulated in terms of quality of life, such as health risks, environmental threats, energy security, climate change and technological change.
The government is still focused on building physical infrastructure to boost economic growth rather than on the city's 'software'. For example, despite the rhetoric, there is still a lack of public investment in quality education and guaranteeing Form Six places for all students. Investment is also urgently needed in health care, the environment, energy efficiency, urban design and planning, and good management of public-sector records.
These basics have been neglected because our political, business and professional elites believe Hong Kong cannot afford to incur a higher level of recurrent government expenditure. What nonsense. The problem is that Hong Kong has a policy bent on restricting spending on capital works and a budgetary process that favours building hardware over software.
Worse, the process gives a skewed impression that we can't afford to spend more on what will make us stronger in the long term because, to get at the artificially hoarded public savings, the government has to run a budget deficit. The Basic Law specifically discourages deficit budgeting because the elites who dominated the drafting body were more concerned about making sure taxes wouldn't be raised than making long-term collective investments.
Will the new legislature focus on these issues?
Moreover, this election is the first to follow the new timetable for further reforms handed down by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in December last year. It stated that direct elections for the chief executive could be held in 2017. According to a Civic Exchange survey, conducted by the Hong Kong Transition Project and published on Tuesday, about half the people polled were confident that, in just over a decade, Hong Kong would be able to return both the head of government and the entire legislature through elections.