The first Legislative Council election after the restructuring of the election was over. In addition to Zhong Guobin from the textile and clothing industry and Zhang Huafeng from the financial services industry, a total of 31 former members were successfully re-elected.
Among the 90 members of the new parliament, 56 are new members of the Legislative Council, while as many as 37 have no political background.
It can be seen from the background of the elected that the number of newcomers has increased significantly compared to the past, and most of them have no political connections but have professional backgrounds.
Among the newcomers, 30 are in the electoral committee sector, and the majority of the newcomers are estimated.
The number of elected candidates who reported that they had no party membership also increased by nearly 60% compared with the previous term.
More new faces will appear in the parliament. I believe it will inject more new thinking into parliamentary discussions and make the review of the bill more comprehensive.
However, in the absence of political party support and Legislative Council experience, they have the opportunity to need more time to familiarize themselves with parliamentary procedures.
For example, the Legislative Council must first elect the chairman and vice-chairmen of the House Committee. In the case of "everyone is new", it may take longer to reach a consensus.
In addition, many candidates for chairmen and vice-chairmen of committees may prefer to be professionals. If they are newcomers, they will naturally need to work harder to familiarize themselves with the procedures.
It is not easy to promote the difficulty of policies
More importantly, the 37 elected candidates currently in the 90 seats have no political connections at all, that is, 40% have no party background.
Internally, this means that they lack the coordination of the party mechanism, and the effort required to narrow differences and build consensus is greater, and even has the opportunity to lead to longer time for review of the bill.
For example, the establishment of standard working hours and the amendment of the minimum wage have always been controversial. How the new parliament chooses and coordinates will affect the promotion of government policies.
In the past, the government adopted the appointment of representative legislators, such as the chairman of a political party, as members of the Executive Council. On the one hand, they allowed them to bring the opinions of the party into the decision-making of the guild. .
However, in view of the fact that the composition of the new Legislative Council is very different from the past, the government will face new challenges in its work to promote the bill, let alone continue to use party leaders to "ticket votes."
In fact, we have always pointed out that the "coupling of votes" model between the government and political parties is not desirable.
The government’s appointment of party leaders seems to be to bring parliamentary opinions into the guild, but the actual operation has changed to force the guild members to support the political parties. However, the members will inevitably consider their own interests and are not necessarily willing to support government policies.
For example, the motion for diversion of the three tunnels was to no avail between the pan-democrats and the establishment, and was finally withdrawn in the Legislative Council for the second time.
Since the composition of the new parliament makes it difficult for the government to adopt a "ticket" strategy, in the coming year, it should reflect on how to do a good job of executive leadership and promote policy work.
There have been many discussions on how to integrate new members. For example, Chen Yong's proposal for the elected National People's Congress, the CPPCC and related national group representatives can refer to the model of the National People's Congress and the CPPCC to establish a group, and set up a team leader to integrate the results of the discussion.
However, Ma Fengguo, who was re-elected, was noncommittal about the alliance of members of the electoral committee or the convener system. He believed that the new parliament could have a lot of free combinations, and members could cooperate in short-term or long-term on individual issues.
In any case, although the Legislative Council is monopolized by the establishment, it is not without challenges to the administration of the government.
We should even say that this is the new beginning of the challenge to "executive-led".
The victory of the Legislative Council election is a major test for the establishment. After the Legislative Council election, the government must unite with the majority of the legislative council members to rebuild political harmony. The functional constituency has a long way to go.