It’s a truism that politicians always make promises that they don’t keep, but how about promises that they are constitionally barred from keeping? The SCMP reports how candidates at a Hong Kong Island election forum battled to outdo each other’s promises to increase welfare for the elderly:

While major parties stressed they had all agreed to push for an increase of the old-age allowance to HK$1,000, Joseph Lai Chi-keong, who left the Democratic Party to enter this contest, pledged to do even more.

“I say, increase the `fruit money’ to HK$1,500. Also, people retire at 60, but we have to wait until 65 to get the `fruit money’. What are we to do for those five years? Let us receive it at 60,” he said.

People aged 65 to 69 receive an old-age allowance of HK$625 a month, while those aged 70 and above get HK$705 a month.

Independent Siu Man-wah, a lawyer, pledged some drastic transport subsidies for the elderly. “I promise one-fifth to one-tenth of the standard price for the elderly,” Ms Siu said…

Ronald Chan Ngok-pang, running fourth on former secretary for security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee’s list, suggested food vouchers…

 Of course, these are all empty promises. The Basic Law bars LegCo members from introducing any legislation that involves the spending of public funds. All they can really do is nag the administration to adopt their ideas, with no guarantee that it ever will. Which makes this bidding war of promises more than little absurd. And a tad dishonest.

I wonder if these candidates are hoping that the voters don’t realise that they have no way of implementing their promises. Or perhaps the voters do understand that their promises are empty, but the candidates are engaging in a display of unrealistic one-upmanship just to prove who cares more about the elderly.

Either way, this episode reveals the pitfalls of electioneering in a place where legislators wield so little power. If you stick to promising only what you can realistically deliver, which is very little, then how can you convince anyone to vote for you? But if you promise pie-in-the-sky just because it sounds good, how will you ever learn to make responsible policy? You often hear the complaint that none of Hong Kong’s political parties show any sign of being prepared to rule. Well, this is why.

The SCMP had an article today on the least involved legislators, naming and shaming the those with the lowest attendance records at council sessions and committee meetings, and those who asked government officials the fewest questions. With two exceptions, all of them came from the functional constituencies. So, expanding on the SCMP’s list, I now give you Hong Kong’s Least Active Legislators:

Worst attendance of full LegCo sessions:
1. Timothy Fok Tsun-ting
Attendance rate: 78%
Constituency: FC - Sports, Performing Arts, Culture and Publication
Registered Electorate: 1,600; mostly corporations
Excuse: Was busy going to Olympics conferences.
“I am going to review this.”

2. Sophie Leung Lau Yau-fun
Attendance rate: 85%
Constituency: FC - Textiles and Garments
Registered Electorate: 3,900; mostly corporations
Excuse: Was busy visiting factories.
“You need to do pragmatic things, not just sitting there as a backdrop of the conference room.”

3. Anson Chan Fong On-sang
Attendance rate: 88%
Constituency: GC - Hong Kong Island
Registered electorate: 596,000 individuals
Excuse: ?

4. Raymond Ho Chung-tai
Attendance rate: 88%
Constituency: FC - Engineering
Registered Electorate: 7,250 individuals
Excuse: ?

Worst attendance on Bills Committees and Panels*
The following legislators attended meetings <50% of the time. In no particular order:

1. Daniel Lam Wai-keung
Member of 6 bills committees
Member of 2 panels
Constituency: FC - Heung Yee Kuk
Registered Electorate: 149 individuals
Elected uncontested in 2004
Excuse: Could not be reached for comment

2. Leung Kwok-hung
Member of 4 bills committees
Constituency: GC - New Territories East
Registered Electorate: 595,000 individuals
Excuse: Committee meetings too technical for him to understand.
“I don’t have much legal knowledge.”

3. Timothy Fok Tsun-ting
Member of 3 bills committees
See above

4. Sophie Leung
Member of 3 panels
See above

Fewest Questions Asked During the Last Four Years

1. Chim Pui-chung
0 questions asked
Constituency: FC - Financial Services
Registered Electorate: 644, mostly corporations
Excuse: “It is not worth asking questions in Legco. For problems I can help solve, I can call up the ministers directly. For those where I can’t help, the government won’t do something just because I ask them a question.”

2. Philip Wong Yu-hong
1 question asked
Constituency: FC - Commercial Second
Registered Electorate: 1,835 individuals and corporations
Elected uncontested in 2004
Excuse: ?

3. Sophie Leung
1 question asked
See above

4. Wong Yung-kan
1 question asked
Constituency: FC - Agriculture and Fisheries
Registered Electorate: 162 corporations
Elected uncontested in 2004
Excuse: ?

5. Timothy Fok
1 question asked
See above

As you can see, with two exceptions, the least active legislators were from functional constituencies with tiny electorates, from a few hundred to a couple of thousand voters. (The size of FC electorates varies from 149 to 77,000.) The excuses they gave were also revealing: they’re too busy, they think LegCo is a waste of time, one admits to being unqualified for the job. Another even confesses that he can get more done through insider lobbying than through LegCo’s formal mechanisms!

At least the public can decide not to re-elect lazy GC members. The FC members are a lot harder to get rid of. 3 of them were ran uncontested back in 2004, and none of them are likely to lose their seats during the next round of elections unless they voluntarily step aside.

* Bills and panels are made up of smaller groups of legislators who scrutinize particular issues. Bills committees have the job of scrutinizing specific pieces of draft legislation. Panels have the job of scrutinizing particular policy areas, such as commerce or health.

…in the Pro Government camp. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention over the last couple of years, but I can’t remember ever seeing this much open squabbling among pro-government political parties.

The SCMP had an article yesterday about how in the wake of Anson Chan’s decision not to run for LegCo, the major pro-government forces are now openly vying for her seat. The major players are the DAB, Regina Ip, and the Liberal Party.

DAB legislator Choy So-yuk said that voters shouldn’t waste their votes on Mrs. Ip:

“We will go all out to encourage voters to vote for the DAB. There is no reason now for them to waste their vote. People should never believe it is easy for us to get two seats”

She should know. In 2004, Choy won her seat against Cyd Ho by only 815 votes.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party looks like it’s gearing up to challenge the DAB on Hong Kong Island too, reportedly in retaliation for the latter trying to muscle in on the Liberals’ claim to the district council functional constituency seat. An earlier agreement between the two parties not to compete with each other apparently broke down. Regarding DAB chairman Ip Kwok-him’s plans to challenge Liberal Party member Lau Wong Fat for the DC functional constituency seat, an unnamed Liberal Party source told reporters:

We are prepared to fight. If Ip Kwok-him is to run, then we will make sure the DAB loses one seat on Hong Kong Island.

While it’s no secret that the pro-business and “patriotic” wings of the pro-government forces have never really gotten along with each other. Back in the colonial days they must have regarded each other with quite a lot of suspicion - the predecessors of the DAB were anti-colonial activists, while the predecessors of the Liberal Party were pro-colonial establishment business elites. Even now there is scarcely a single issue they agree on except for their mutual distaste for the democrats. But why are the disagreements coming to the surface now?

Frankly I have no idea, but if I had to make a guess, I would guess that Donald Tsang just doesn’t have the same ability to make them all swallow their egos and play nicely that Tung Chee Hwa did. Tung Chee Hwa was a pro-Beijing insider, and even a protégé of ex-President Jiang Zemin. Tsang isn’t.

Last week, when Donald Tsang addressed LegCo to try to get them to shut up about the undersecretaries appointment controversy, he fell back on the old Tung Chee Hwa mantra of “let’s concentrate on livelihood issues”.

It didn’t work, because the attention and popularity-starved democrats aren’t going to let go of perfectly good red meat when they see it, but let me humour Tsang for a moment. Okay, Donald, what are you doing about livelihood issues?

What are you doing to alleviate the pain caused by soaring inflation and rising food and transportation costs? What are you doing about elderly welfare? About rising income inequality? Are you going to pass a minimum wage? What about a competition law? Do you plan on doing anything with your enormous budget surplus besides giving the upper middle class another temporary tax break?

It baffles me that government officials think they are on airtight territory when it come to economic issues. After Tung Chee Hwa was shamed by the gigantic protests of 2003, he said that he had failed at politics and public relations, but insisted that his policies were correct. But Cyberport, Science Park, Disneyland, Harbourfest, the great Housing Targets Debacle and the resulting land auction freeze weren’t such wise policies after all.

I for one, would love to see this election fought on livelihood issues.

Whenever I read articles about the democratic camp’s political strategy, reporters always focus on disunity within their ranks. Will the democrats be able to agree on a single set of demands for universal suffrage? Will a few key members defect from an important vote? Will they be able to avoid competing with one another during the District Council or LegCo elections? But in fact there is no reason to expect the democrats to be united in a system like ours. We have a political system where the biggest disagreement is not about economics, or culture, or social issues, but over whether to change the system itself.

This means that the democrats are cast in the role of powerless outsiders demanding reform, a role that automatically puts you in a double-bind. If you are too willing to co-operate with the establishment, your risk being labeled a sell-out. But if you are too stubborn and inflexible, you become even more of an outsider.

This happens in pretty much all reform movements. Look at the environmental movement. Moderate environmentalists are turned off by the hard core protest tactics of extreme groups. The moderates are trying to influence policy-makers, and they don’t want to be associated with crazy people who chain themselves to trees and throw paint on wearers of fur coats. But the extremists don’t trust the moderates, either. The extremists feel it is more important to stick to their principles than to have a realistic chance of persuading policy-makers to change. They suspect that the moderates are too eager to cozy up to those in power. Perhaps they have even been bought out by polluters. And so that is the situation with our democrats.

Another problem is that in a situation where the players are busy arguing about the rules of the game, they don’t get around to forming coherent positions on real life issues. Should elderly people receive more welfare? Should there be a business competition law, or a minimum wage? Should we spend more money on improving the environment? Should people have to pay more money for health care? How important is heritage preservation? How much should we spend on big construction projects?

The democrats don’t always agree on these real life issues. For example, labour union democrats might be in favour of big construction projects (more jobs for construction workers), but middle-class democrats might be more concerned about the environmental and heritage effects of said projects. The thing that news reports rarely point out is that there is even less unity among the pro-Beijing camp. How can a labour unionist like Chan Yuen-han and uber-business lobbyist James Tien possibly be on the same side? There is not a single issue that they agree on, except that they are both opposed to democratization.

The difference is that Beijing can keep its supporters in line, despite their disagreements. When push comes to shove, the pro-labour “patriots” will usually set aside their priorities and vote in support of the government’s pro-business policies. There is no equivalent unifying “hammer” for the democrats. You’d think that if they really were stooges of the Americans and British, they’d be better organized than this.

So while the democrats’ performance has been less than inspiring, keep in mind that they are in a difficult situation. It would take a leader of extraordinary talent to overcome their institutional disadvantages, and so far they haven’t seen one yet.