Getting Legco's turkeys to vote for Christmas could be costly

Hong Kong's legislators are among the highest-paid in the world yet they have less power than lawmakers in practically any other place where there is some form of election.

Not only are Legco members paid some 30 per cent more than, for example, their counterparts in Britain, but their pay as a ratio of gross domestic product per head is higher than that of legislators in the United States and, according to a recent survey by The Economist, much higher than that of counterparts in most of the industrialised world.

It is a cheap shot to say that our legislators don't work for their money; some work extremely hard and it is no coincidence that the hardest grafters are to be found among directly elected members. In the rotten boroughs, where election is confined to a handful of voters, some legislators cannot even be bothered to turn up for council meetings.

Whether there is much point in them bothering is another question because in Hong Kong's weird system of governance, legislators cannot even initiate legislation without government permission.

Today's Legislative Council is hardly fit for purpose. So when the time comes to fulfil the pledge of having a fully elected body, there will also be a need for a complete review of its functions.

Of course achieving a truly democratically elected Legco will hardly be plain sailing because it is now clear that Beijing is set on undermining the concept of universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive, the so-called first stage of the democratisation process. But the second stage is equally important and even more fraught because the people who will be voting on its implementation will, in the case of the rotten borough representatives, be voting for their extinction if there is anything like a plan for full democracy.