Is it true there is no big issue for aspirants contesting the elections of the first SAR legislature? Is Hong Kong doing so well there is nothing important for candidates to debate? Democratic Party aspirant Lee Wing-tat seems to believe so. He said there was no single issue that was controversial and divisive enough to become the talk of the town.
Mr Lee and his colleagues are not alone in this view, judging by the performance of other candidates in the election forums, which featured trivial disputes of little relevance. For instance, the Democratic Party appears obsessed with the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong's (DAB) failure to support the call for the release of Chinese dissident Wang Dan in the pre-1997 Legislative Council vote. The party also wanted to pin down the DAB on its views over the rehabilitation of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The DAB has been preoccupied with the right of abode blunder of the two Democrats, Albert Chan Wai-yip and John Tse Wing-ling, who were forced to withdraw from the polls. The DAB demanded the Democratic Party clarify whether disciplinary action would be taken.
It seems candidates cannot conduct sensible debates the public can relate to. If the candidates would pay attention to what the public says in the media, they would find plenty of subjects to debate - the grievances of the middle-class over the Government's confusing housing policy, concerns of parents about mother-tongue teaching and workforce worries of surviving the economic downturn.
These are issues of greater interest to the majority of the population.
The candidates choose not to address these pressing issues because they may find them too controversial to handle. Take the housing policy: for parties wanting to gain supporters from the middle-class, this should have been a priority issue. Unemployment is also an issue worth debating for those wanting to win more grassroots support.