Too early to ‘grade’ CY Leung’s performance, engineer group contesting Election Committee polls says

A group of engineering sector bigwigs who formed an alliance to contest seats on the Election Committee for Hong Kong’s next chief executive have declined to give their backing to incumbent Leung Chun-ying – at least for now.

Widely regarded as pro-establishment, the group of 30, which calls itself Engineers Power, or EP30, said it would wait for the formal emergence of the chief executive candidates before discussing whom to support.

The 30 engineers are vying for seats in the panel’s engineering subsector. A poll will be held on December 11 to choose the 1,200-member committee that will elect the new chief executive on March 26 next year.

EP30 includes 13 incumbent Election Committee members, including Otto Poon Lok-to and Raymond Ho Chung-tai, who nominated Leung’s major rival Henry Tang Ying-yen in the 2012 chief executive election. Another member, Yim Kin-ping, nominated Leung the same year.

Also on EP30 are big names such as Wai Chi-sing, managing director of the Urban Renewal Authority and former permanent secretary for development; former presidents of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers Edmund Leung Kwong-ho, John Luk Wang-kwong and Greg Wong Chak-yan; Leo Leung Kwok-kee of tycoon Sir Gordon Wu’s Hopewell Holdings; and Wan Chi-tin of Hongkong Electric.

Edmund Leung, a spokesman for EP30, said: “It may be too early to talk about Leung’s performance. It is like grading a student before he finishes the course.”