Revealed: turnout figures for Executive Council meetings
'Breakthrough' as attendance figures for the Executive Council are released for the first time; one member has a 100 per cent record
Disclosure of attendance rates at Executive Council meetings for the first time has been hailed as a breakthrough by a lawmaker whose question extracted the information.
The government released the figures yesterday - after years of refusing to answer questions on the issue - in reply to a query from Civic Party legislator Kenneth Chan Ka-lok.
They show that former education minister Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, who took time off last year to care for his dying wife, has the lowest attendance at 61 per cent, while staunch Leung Chun-ying supporter Cheung Chi-kong is the only one with 100 per cent attendance.
The figures, from the date the present government took office in July 2012 to March this year, show an average attendance rate of 88 per cent for the 14 non-official members.
Chan said it was a "breakthrough" towards a more transparent government.
"It shows the government was simply lazy when they refused previous demands to publicise the data," said the pan-democrat, who filed the question at the Finance Committee's special meeting on the budget. "It was also unjustified for it to cite Exco's confidentiality rule."