My Take | Victorious pan-dems off on the right foot
- Pledges by the winners of the district council elections to re-examine ridiculously expensive vanity projects and abolish proxy votes are welcome
Pan-democrats won in a landslide against their pro-government rivals at the recent district polls. Now they have to prove they are worthy of taking over district affairs across the city. Their first move comes swiftly and is certainly in the right direction.
Proxy votes on funding and other issues by district council members should have been abolished long ago. They enable absentee members who don’t even have the decency to show up at meetings to exercise voting powers in blocs.
Of course, the changes they now demand will mainly impose discipline on their own camp, as they take over 392 out of 452 seats and dominate all but one of the city’s 18 district councils.
But the political pendulum tends to swing in local elections. When government-allied parties such as the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong win back more seats in future, they will hopefully be bound by the proposed rule change.
However, far more important is the readiness of the pan-dems to re-examine expensive vanity projects funded by the government’s Signature Project Scheme, which was launched in 2013 and allotted up to HK$100 million to each district.
Critics including yours truly have long argued the scheme encourages white elephant projects and possibly corruption.
It was certainly a gravy train for the DAB and friends, courtesy of taxpayers, as the party had dominated the councils for more than a decade.