Campaign momentum will not fade away, candidate vows The pan-democratic camp plans to set up a shadow cabinet after the chief executive election, the challenger for the top job, Alan Leong Kah-kit, said yesterday. Mr Leong said the momentum gathered during his campaign would not fade away after the ballot - which he conceded he had no chance of winning - and could spur the formation of a shadow cabinet to monitor the performance of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and his administration in his second term. But the shadow cabinet would be built up gradually over the course of the term. 'Whether there would be a complete shadow cabinet at the end of the five-year term, this is something we would continue to work on,' he told Commercial Radio yesterday. It was the first time Mr Leong had publicly floated the idea of a shadow cabinet. Fellow Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong Ka-wah said the proposal was still 'at the idea stage' and that the pan-democrats had yet to sit down and discuss it properly. Democratic Party lawmaker Yeung Sum, one of Mr Leong's campaign organisers, said the idea had always been 'one of the issues on the table' and showed that Mr Leong had the vision to think past election activities. He said the idea would be discussed further after the campaign and that it was 'a very natural next step' to maintain scrutiny on Mr Tsang after he was returned to office. Veteran politician Allen Lee Peng-fei said in December he believed a shadow cabinet made up of pan-democrats was likely to emerge after this campaign. Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang, who was attending a Unicef function yesterday, said she would not join such a shadow cabinet if invited, saying her only involvement in politics was to spark debate over how to achieve universal suffrage. On other matters, Mr Leong hit out at critics of his political reform proposals, saying they were only trying to divert public attention from universal suffrage, one of his core campaign platforms. The barrister-lawmaker's platform, which calls for amending the Basic Law so that principal officials are not appointed by Beijing, has been criticised by some as unconstitutional and pushing for Hong Kong's independence. At a public function yesterday, former secretary for justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie said Beijing would not endorse Mr Leong's platform. She reiterated that his proposal was against the Basic Law and was an indication of Mr Leong's distrust of the central government. Meanwhile, Election Committee members who are affiliated with the pan-democratic camp criticised Mr Tsang for turning down their invitation to a March 7 forum that would be open to the public and adopt the style of US presidential debates. Mr Tsang has promised to attend only one forum held for Election Committee members on Thursday and another to be jointly organised by the electronic media next month.
