Former Hong Kong chief secretary Anson Chan backs Legco election reform plans by three professional groups
Financiers, insurance agents and actuaries call for expansion of voter bases for their legislative functional constituencies
Three professional groups have urged the government to consider proposals that would easily broaden the voter bases of their legislative functional constituencies ahead of the Legislative Council election in September.
They are dissatisfied that a Legco bill committee now in session was asked by the government only to go through “technical amendments” while keeping the 30-year-old trade-based election system, which currently returns 30 of the 70 lawmakers to the Legco, intact.
With the reform of the chief executive election failing last year, the government has shelved any plans to alter the Legco election method. This is because the National People’s Congress Standing Committee ruled in 2007 that Hong Kong will not have universal suffrage for the legislature until after the chief executive is elected by “one person, one vote”.
READ MORE: Who is the biggest loser after rejection of 2017 electoral reform proposal?
“We all understand the reality is difficult, but we do hope the central government will listen to us,” said Edward Chan Hon-fai, spokesman for Financier Conscience, a group with about 100 financial professionals which was formed before the reform exercise last year.
His group has made proposals to expand the voter bases of two constituencies, finance and financial services, which are among the 30 sectors that have the smallest electorates. The former currently has 124 corporate electors and the latter 573.
Chan suggested including a total of about 50,000 securities staff and licensed practitioners covered by registers of the Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission.
Two other groups, Insurance Arise and Act Voice, which are formed by insurance agents, brokers and actuaries respectively, called for expanding the voter base of the insurance sector, which currently comprises only 135 corporates.
The groups proposed to give the votes to some 100,000 individual practitioners registered with several regulatory or professional bodies, including the Federation of Insurers and the Actuarial Society.
READ MORE: Hong Kong’s former No 2 official Anson Chan airs ‘disappointment’ at ex-colleague’s comments during HKU appointment saga
All three groups said they ultimately support the abolition of the trade-based seats, but before that can happen, widening the electorate is an interim improvement.
Anson Chan Fang On-sang, former Chief Secretary, said she supported the groups. “The government can’t say it has no time to work out the Legco election reforms. Their proposals already show there are easy ways to do that.”
The functional constituencies were never envisaged to be a permanent fixture when created in 1985, Chan said. It was unfair for the underrepresented trade-based councillors to have the power to veto proposals by their directly elected colleagues in the geographical constituencies under the present split-voting system, she added.
