The government last night rolled out celebrities to promote its political reform package, in a last-minute effort to drum up support for a proposal with an uncertain fate.
The latest public relations move came after Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen took to the streets with his cabinet on Thursday to urge the public to pressure lawmakers to endorse the proposal.
Mr Tsang, meanwhile, continued to lobby pro-democracy legislators yesterday in the hope of securing the six extra votes the government needs to secure the required two-thirds majority support in the Legislative Council.
In a series of 30-second public-service announcements, Canto-pop singer Leon Lai Ming, actress Lisa Wang Ming-chuen and prominent business figures and professionals sing the praises of the reform package.
'The political reform package proposed in the Fifth Report will open up more opportunities in district councils and the Legislative Council for young people to participate in politics,' Lai says in the first announcement, which aired on TV and radio yesterday. 'This is already one step closer to our aim of achieving democratic universal suffrage along the principle of gradual and orderly progress.'
Others selling the reform package include tycoon Allan Zeman, Philemon Choi Yuen-wan who chairs the Commission on Youth, school principal and appointed district councillor Patrick Lai Shu-ho, and six non-official executive councillors.
