A wish list for Hong Kong in 2016 to break the cycle of dysfunction

If you have never observed a Legislative Council meeting, count yourself lucky for not having wasted precious hours of your life. The amount of needless and pointless questioning is of a scale that makes many other problematic parliaments look like well-functioning institutions.

The passage of the copyright bill now before Legco, introduced in June 2014, is one prime example. It is not the only piece of impending legislation from 2014 that has yet to be passed; three others remain stuck before the house, along with 18 others tabled last year. The wrangling over the funding for an IT bureau took over three years before it went through last November. Two controversial additional funding requests, for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge and the high-speed rail link to Guangdong, will now be before the Finance Committee, with nearly everyone fearing delays.

Thorough scrutiny of any proposed legislation is one of the most important responsibilities of any lawmaker. If a bill has fatal flaws, people count on their representatives to kick it out before it becomes law. Clearly, though, the legislature’s check-and-balance role can also be abused to paralyse government. Lawmakers have the right to use the process whichever way they want, within the rules of the game. But I hope more of them will be guided by their moral responsibility to serve Hong Kong residents, even when it goes against the politicians’ short-term interests.

READ MORE: Childish Hong Kong lawmakers are making a farce of the legislative process

So, looking ahead at the year, this is one wish I have for the city: that Hong Kong lawmakers will have the moral courage to put aside partisan bickering for the larger good. If more funding projects get stalled by unrelenting filibustering, the ultimate losers are residents. Over time, businesses will lose patience, pack up and go elsewhere. Jobs will be lost, opportunities missed.

If the government proposes policies that can bring good to the city, don’t just think about the political mileage you can get out of opposing. The signal from the district council elections is clear: people are tired of polarised politics and entrenched positions. They gravitated instead to fresher candidates with no record of blind partisanship. Such voter sentiments may prevail again at this year’s Legco election.

Politicians who automatically view everything through the pro or anti lens have been warned.

My second wish is for a chief executive who is not afraid to speak, as a wise journalist friend put it, more Hongkongese than Beijingese. When Leung Chun-ying called on Xi Jinping (習近平) last December, the president identified three major tasks for the chief executive: seeking development, ensuring stability and enhancing social harmony in the city. That last target is interesting, because it suggests that even Leung’s boss knows the divisions in Hong Kong society need to be healed.