Functional constituencies must be made more accountable

Justice has been done in Mandy Tam Heung-man's case against the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Quite properly, the Court of First Instance has ruled that the institute was wrong in its decision to refuse to distribute her newsletters to her constituents, who qualify as electors solely because they are recorded in the membership register of the institute. However, the ruling hinged around the institute's past practice of distributing such newsletters for previous accounting legislators, and its obligation to exercise its powers consistently and equally. The ruling made clear that Ms Tam had no legal right to access the register.

Ms Tam's case has highlighted a defect in the law. As the judge said, 'it is correct that it is not the function of the court . . . to remedy any failure on the part of the legislature to include in . . . the Legislative Council Ordinance, provisions . . . to enable her to communicate with her electors'.

Hong Kong is unique in having constitutional special interest groups. In real democracies, special interest groups can only lobby lawmakers who are elected by universal suffrage, but in Hong Kong special interests have seats in the assembly. As the judge said, 'I am unaware of . . . any other country in which seats in its legislative council, whatever form that may take, are elected in this manner.'

The government should amend the Legislative Council Ordinance to require that, so long as we have functional constituencies, their legislators are entitled to full access to any membership registers of organisations which qualify electors in their constituencies, allowing the legislators to write directly to their constituents.

These registers should be open to online free public access anyway. The current online public access to the institute of certified public accountants' register is farcical. You can check that someone is an accountant, but cannot find out which firm they work for (if they are practising) or what their level is. Nor can you look up firm names and find their partners or qualified employees.