How Hong Kong’s policy address history explains the city’s present struggles
- The changes in the number of references to democracy, consensus, youth and inequality in policy addresses since the handover reveal that our leaders have abysmal political reflexes, are elitist and have failed to translate talk into action
It was over the Christmas break five years ago that, with little better to do, I set myself a mind-numbing challenge. I ploughed through all the policy addresses from 1998 to 2015, and counted the number of times chief executives Tung Chee-hwa, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Leung Chun-ying had used four words: democracy, consensus, inequality and youth.
But first, a reprise of what I found back in 2015. All three of the chief executives paid lip service to “democracy” – Tsang in particular, who on average used the words “democracy” or “democratic” around six times in each policy address.
Tung mainly ignored democracy in his policy addresses, but made up for it in 2005 with three references to it as he continued to focus on “people-based governance”. It was clear even then how much political lip service could be given to commitments that so often came to nothing.
Most frustrating to me at that time was the steady obsession with “consensus”. The word was repeatedly on the lips of our first three leaders – Tsang took it to a crescendo in his policy addresses in 2006 and 2007 with over 10 references in each address. Failure to achieve a consensus was repeatedly used through numerous inconclusive consultations as an excuse for policy inertia.
