Confidence in leadership tumbles
Confidence in Hong Kong people's ability to rule Hong Kong has dropped significantly since October, according to a new poll.
Judging how the SAR has been run since the handover, 69.7 per cent said Hong Kong people managed Hong Kong well, a drop of 11.2 percentage points from when the question was asked in October. A further 62.4 per cent found the system operating very well, a drop of 5.1 points.
People were very pessimistic about the SAR administration and politics compared with last year, said Dr Timothy Wong Ka-ying, who was in charge of the survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University.
'Some 39.9 per cent of the respondents felt Hong Kong had become worse after the handover and a further 66.7 per cent felt they did not have much influence over the Government's policy,' he said. 'This reflects people's dissatisfaction with the Government's handling of the economic situation.' The survey found that 47 per cent of the respondents believed politicians were mostly acting out of self-interest and 82.6 per cent thought politics was difficult to understand.
But about 62 per cent believed voting was the most effective way to reflect their views to the Government and 76 per cent agreed Legco and the Chief Executive should be directly elected.
Meanwhile, 57.3 per cent of the interviewees still saw themselves as Hong Kong, rather than Chinese, citizens.
Only 36.3 per cent believed Beijing was trustworthy and 18.8 per cent were satisfied with the state of democracy and freedom on the mainland.
The telephone poll of 1,072 respondents surveyed last Thursday to Sunday was conducted on behalf of the Hong Kong Centre for Studies on Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
