Opinion | Blind support of the government and ignoring public sentiment leads to a voter backlash. When will the DAB learn?

The DAB was punished at the polls the last time it sided with the government in its attempt to push through an unpopular mainland-related law. Not only did the party make the same mistake this year, it doesn’t seem to be taking responsibility for its error

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DAB chairperson Starry Lee Wai-king is flanked by party members at an rally in Tamar Park, Admiralty, on November 21. Lee offered to step down after the party’s poor showing at the district council elections, but the party did not accept her resignation. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 6:30am, 2 Dec 2019Updated: 10:45am, 2 Dec 2019

The pro-establishment camp’s huge losses in Hong Kong’s district council elections should not have been a shock. Pro-establishment parties were, by and large, resigned to their “fate”. They have fully accepted and even embraced the fact that they end up paying for the government’s wrongs. It was thus in 2003. So, why would it be any different in 2019?

In 2003, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), which later merged with the Progressive Alliance to form today’s Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, lost 21 seats and its founding chairman, Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, who would later become president of the Legislative Council, stepped down.

The party was punished for blindly supporting the Tung Chee-hwa administration’s insistence on enacting a national security law as required by Article 23 of the Basic Law.

It prompted not only a party leadership reshuffle but a process of deep introspection and painful soul-searching. Party leaders were able to reflect and owned up to their mistakes. The party had failed to respond to the public pulse because it had, in the course of “supporting” the government, become deaf to public sentiment.

Tsang’s successor made it a priority for the party to attune itself to the voice of the people and to reposition its relationship with the government. The late DAB chairman Ma Lik identified clearly where the party had gone wrong, vowed to take action and, on the night he took over as party leader, said, “our time will come again”.

Then DAB chairman Ma Lik talks to Martin Lee (centre) and Yeung Sum of the Democratic Party, after the results of the Legislative Council election were announced on September 13, 2004. Ma is credited with turning around the DAB’s fortunes after the party suffered a crushing defeat in the 2003 district council polls. Photo: AFP