Alice Wu

Opinion | Hong Kong government has failed to tell story of new district councils well

The administration should have shut down ‘district councils’ altogether, given that its proposal to overhaul them will face little resistance in the Legislative Council

As it is, the government’s failure to rename and rebrand the district-level bodies has led to the criticism that the overhaul is a ‘regression’

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Chief Executive John Lee (centre) announces an overhaul of district councils during a press conference at the government headquarters in Hong Kong on May 2. Photo: AFP

Alice Wu

Published: 6:15am, 8 May 2023

Before we delve into the impact of the revamp of Hong Kong’s district councils, let’s look at how the government has failed, once again, in its public relations strategy.

It seems the only tool in its kit is expectation management, which basically comes down to the government letting word out of what to expect or how little to expect, so that by the time its plans are officially unveiled, the public won’t be caught by surprise.

In this case, talk of drastically reducing the number of elected seats and reintroducing appointed seats had been circulating for a long enough time. But that’s not good enough.

The government has failed to tell the story of the new district councils well. It has regurgitated the story of the old district councils, which goes something like this: separatists used district councils as a platform to promote separatism, thus turning the councils, whose sole function is to serve residents, into national security risks.

The district council revamp is the last piece of the electoral overhaul that began when Beijing changed both the composition of the Election Committee that selects the chief executive and the composition of the Legislative Council by amending Annexes I and II of the Basic Law. At that time, the district councils were stripped of their membership of the Election Committee and of their influence in Legco.

The Donald Tsang administration had tackled constitutional reform twice, in 2005 and 2010. The 2010 political reform proposal was the first and only one passed since the handover.