Hong Kong tertiary institution staff to vote in ‘referendum’ on contentious governance issues
Staff representatives hope a positive result can help lawmakers table private bills seeking to diminish chief executive’s influence
Staff members at the eight publicly funded tertiary institutions will next month vote on a much-demanded governance reform in an unprecedented joint referendum, the institutions’ staff unions announced yesterday.
About 26,000 full-time staff members at the eight institutions will be eligible to cast their votes at polling stations on campuses or through an online voting system specifically designed for the referendum.
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They will vote on whether the chief executive should have the power to appoint governing council members, and whether more members should be elected from inside universities than from outside.
The voting, described by organisers as the first of its kind in local higher education history, comes at a time when university students, staff and alumni have been demanding changes to the council structure amid concerns that political interference was undermining academic freedom.
Their worries were ignited by a series of events they said showed Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying using council members appointed by him to punish those speaking against the establishment.
The events included the rejection by the University of Hong Kong council of the promotion of pro-democracy law professor Johannes Chan Man-mun and Leung’s controversial appointment of former education minister Arthur Li Kwok-cheung as HKU’s council chairman.
“[The referendum] is for us to show professors really care about our universities,” said City University staff union chairman Dr John Tse Wing-ling. “We don’t want political influence. We want to do our teaching and research without political influence.”