Public Eye
Chamber chief twists Democratic Party's goal
Big business, which fears true democracy, is again playing dirty to undermine it. It's using phony logic to keep alive the present system, which allows a small circle of privileged voters to elect legislators. The chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Anthony Wu Ting-yuk, says these so-called functional constituencies should stay since even the Democratic Party has now voted to increase them. Public Eye says that's bull. Wu is twisting what the democrats have done. They didn't vote to lock in functional constituencies, but with the ultimate aim of abolishing them altogether. They voted for five new constituencies on the condition that Hong Kong's entire electorate can vote in them, with candidates being nominated only by district councillors who are themselves elected by the people. Wu says the formula could work in other functional constituencies, too. We say that's bull, Mr Wu. Your chamber of commerce has only 4,000 members. And they're not elected by the people. Hong Kong has 3.43 million voters. They have no right to vote for your members. So why should 4,000 businesspeople have the right to nominate Legislative Council candidates for them to vote for?
We have world's second-widest wealth gap ...
You know all about Hong Kong's obscene wealth gap. Now Public Eye will tell you exactly how obscene it is. Hong Kong has 205,000 US-dollar millionaires. But this tiny group of rich guys controls 73 per cent of our wealth. That's right, most of the money in our supposedly wealthy city is in the hands of just 205,000 households. The rest of us share the remaining 27 per cent. A study by the Boston Consulting Group shows Hong Kong has the world's second widest wealth gap after totalitarian Saudi Arabia, where the oil sheikhs control 77 per cent of the nation's wealth. We surpass even the US, where the millionaires control 56 per cent of the wealth. Millionaires in most European countries control less than 30 per cent of the wealth. Now you know why we have such an angry underclass.
... but fat cats won't even bend for elderly poor
Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen headed a poverty commission that flunked in fixing the wealth gap. Many elderly people in the underclass have moved across the border where it's more affordable to live. But our overpaid bureaucrats say that if they're not in Hong Kong for at least 90 days a year, they forfeit their HK$1,000-a-month old age allowance. Even the expense accounts of these bureaucrats exceed HK$1,000 a month. They won't fix the wealth gap but punish the poor instead.