“The election of the Election
Committee for the election of the Chief Executive” is such a clumsy heading. But it well reflects the indirect way of the
election of our CE. The 2016 Election Committee subsector elections will be held on
December 11, 2016. The Election Committee will consist
of 1200 members,
with 1,044 members elected from 35 subsectors, 60
members nominated by the Religious subsector and 96 ex officio members. The function of the Election Committee is to
elect the CE. Thus it is natural that it
precedes the election of the CE, which will be held on March 26, 2017. While we read hints and moves about who is
going for the CE, there has been news about people announcing how they would cast
their votes as to-be-members of the to-be-formed Election Committee, and
strategies about getting as many members with similar stance elected in the
sub-sector elections as possible.
Before 2012, people tended not to
view the Election Committee as something with vast difference from a rubber
stamp. Afterall, it might not be
practical to choose Alan LEONG against Donald TSANG. There was no real competition between the
pro-establishment and the pan-democratic camps, or among the pro-establishment
camp. The highest aim of the minority
was to put up a debate, or to have a chance to vote. However, in 2012, with 3 candidates
participating in the CE election, 689 members voted for a change to Hong Kong. We then faced changes in Hong Kong.
Since then, people figured that
apart from showing that they were famous, popular, and patriotic; apart from
having chances to publicize their political stances; apart from various reasons
of pride and prejudice; there existed a chance that they might actually take
part in electing the CE by being elected into the Election Committee. So this year, you would expect more escalated competition
in the election of the Election Committee. In the Medical subsector, we have 30 seats. Do not underestimate our influence on the
result of CE election to be 30/1200. It
should be 30/601, which is not an insignificant proportion. This had been demonstrated in 2012 when quite
a number of votes from the Medical subsector fell to our existing CE.
For a minority of doctors and
dentists, they take part as candidates and need to think about how to be
elected into the Election Committee. For
the majority of doctors and dentists, they need instead to think about how to
choose members to represent them. For a
significant number of doctors and dentists, they do not care. In the previous few elections, 3 strategies
had been adopted by the candidates. However,
in this year’s election, there appears one common platform among all
subsectors. Focus of the media also
converges on a single question: whether you sell ABC or not. In case some readers are staying too far away
from news and politics (and Hong Kong), ABC is the short form for “anyone but
CY”. Of course this is not a good
criterion for choosing the CE of Hong Kong, as not a single area on policy is
mentioned. It only shows how desperate
the candidates and the media perceive Hong Kong people are.
The tradition way to get support from
voters is to tell them how reliable you are. You are honest, rational, experienced and wise
to make a choice for them. No one knows
how and how well this since-ancient strategy works. In election of the Election Committee, voters
choose to believe in an agent so he can choose a CE of whom they are not able
to choose to believe in.
Another common practice is to get
affiliated with groups. It can be
political camps or whatever. It is
believed that voters tend to vote orchestrated. Of course the other side of the coin is that
your affiliation might actually be a negative asset.
The third way is to make
promises. The most obvious example this
year is the slogan ABC. The candidate
promises that he would never vote for CY no matter who else takes part in the
CE election. The message is clear and
non-ambiguous. However, it is common
practice for politicians to eat their words. Even such straight-forward ABC promise cannot
be whole-heartedly relied upon. The
actual voting is by secret ballot. We
still do not know exactly where the 689 votes came from; we cannot guarantee
that candidates will cash their ABC promise. Somehow, that goes back to point number one
about integrity.
A huge promise was made in 2012
by an alliance of candidates (the Alliance) formed with perceived relations
with the HKMA. The promise they made was
that they would cast their votes, if elected, to the CE candidate according to
the result of a survey carried out by the HKMA. It was claimed that all doctors and dentists
had their say. The design was likened to
a subsector universal suffrage. The
beauty of the design was that the Alliance made use of all 3 aforementioned
methods to attract votes. Candidates of
the Alliance were mostly well-known to the profession. They had the affiliation
to the HKMA. And they made a promise, an
attractive promise.
It turned out that not everyone
voted for the Alliance. Although most of
the candidates were famous, they lost their personal charisma of decision
making, as they had to vote according to the survey result. It did not matter who the candidates were,
because they would just vote accordingly. Another point was that not everyone wanted the
majority win. Some just wanted to win,
the others wanted to be the majority. A
surer way of getting your favorite CE candidate winning was to vote for those
who promised to support him. What the
majority of the medical profession thought was not their priority.
There was no way to quantify how
well the idea of subsector universal suffrage was received. However, before we commented on the results of
clinical studies, we were taught to look at the designs and procedures. Technically, the HKMA had never been a
professional body in carrying out polls. In the yearly election of the HKMA Council, a
third party (an accountant) was involved to ensure more fairness. However, no such mechanism had been used in surveys.
The process was by no means comparable
to the stringent requirements in formal polling carried out by the government. Had voters’ information, especially mailing
addresses, been updated? Was notice
formal with enough coverage and time? Was
the process of survey fair and transparent? It would be hypocritical to say that one could
rely on a fax machine assessable to any staff in the office with no mechanism
to verify the authenticity of the questionnaires returned. But of course the HKMA was not to blame. Afterall the HKMA was just doing a survey, a
survey no different from other surveys that it carried out year-round. The HKMA would not know that there might be other
parties using the survey results for other purposes. At the same time, the Alliance was relying on a
survey result of the biggest organization in the profession. There was no way the Alliance could have intervene
the process or the results. The best was
said to have been done.
Having analysed all these,
readers do not take me wrong that I am against any party making any promise to solicit
votes. Some promises are better than
none. We are not the aged waiting for
tourist buses to lift us to stamp after an average quality full meal. I just want to remind you that we know critical
analysis. Look before you vote, although
there is always the insurmountable uncertainty of secret ballots.
Nowadays, you just can’t believe
in anyone.
(Source: HKMA News October 2016)
