Big parties hope to keep their numbers up
District councillors often complain that they have little power, but political parties covet council seats as important tools for wooing residents and engineering an electoral pay-off in the Legislative Council.
Both the Beijing-loyalist and pan-democratic camps expect a tough fight in the November elections.
The largest party in each camp has set a conservative target for the campaign - to maintain their present number of seats; any gain will be seen as a windfall.
The Beijing-friendly Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong was the biggest winner in 2007, taking 115 of the 405 elected seats. That tally has since grown to 119. This time the DAB plans to field about 200 candidates.
'Our target is to retain the number of seats we currently have,' said Ip Kwok-him, the convenor of DAB's Legislative Council caucus. 'Because the number of seats we won in the previous election was rather big already, it is difficult to expect substantial growth.'
Ip, who is a Central and Western District councillor, said the political atmosphere is favourable for the pro-government camp. He cites as evidence the victory of a Federation of Trade Unions candidate in a July 24 by-election in Tsuen Wan, the city's most recent. Kot Siu-yuen defeated the Democratic Party's Mui Yee-ling by a wide margin, 2,086 votes to 1,006.
Ip believes the voters' decisions on who to support will be affected by the knowledge that next year will see the introduction of five extra seats in Legco to be filled by district councillors in a city-wide poll - making them so-called super seats - but he could not say how.
The Democratic Party, the largest group in the pan-democratic camp, won 59 seats in 2007 and is the second-biggest power on the district councils. However, it suffered a blow when a reformist faction resigned en masse late last year in protest against the party's support of the government's constitutional reform package. The party now has 50 seats and plans to field 125 candidates.
'It's going to be a tough contest,' said party chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan, who sits on Tuen Mun District Council. 'While we have limited resources, our opponents will spend a great deal of money to organise their networks. We are competing against a huge national machinery, that is, the DAB and the FTU. We hope to at least retain our present number of seats.' Asked if the party had set a target of increasing its tally, he said: 'We will strive our best.'
Six pan-democratic groups, including the Democrats, have formed a coalition called the Power for Democracy and have agreed to together field some 300 candidates.
November will also see the electoral debut of several new political groups. People Power, set up by former League of Social Democrats chairman Wong Yuk-man, plans to field 50 to 60 candidates, challenging both the Beijing-loyalist camp and the Democratic Party. The NeoDemocrats, which broke away from the Democratic Party, and lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee's New People's Party plan to field about 10 candidates each.
