Who should be our coming LegCo representative?

Not very far from now, we should have elected our next LegCo representative on 12th September 2004. In the past one or two years, most of the citizens of Hong Kong are pressing hard for a change in our Policy Makers and have been successful in three of them. Should we follow suit?

The candidates have a lot of promises together with beautiful words in their campaign pamphlets which you should have sighted by now. However, most of their promises have been heard for years and yet nothing has changed so far, at least in the earnings of private doctors. Problems like severe Public Private Imbalance in health care delivery, training of too many local medical graduates and the ever increasing cost for Medical Protection are just a few of those that did worth mentioning and have been there for years.

What actually happened in the past 19 years since 1985, the first year of having functional constituency representatives in the LegCo in paving the way to democracy in Hong Kong after the signing of the Sino-British Agreement on Hong Kong by Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Deng Xiao Ping, was that the candidates gave many promises during their election campaign, some visiting every doctor in the whole territory and even bowed in the car parks of Hospitals to passers by, whether they were electors or not. However, after being elected, they went into “pre-senile dementia” and acted according to their own wishes. Some might still send out letters to solicit “opinion” from the profession, and use only those results that were favourable to them. Some might even wax and wane in doing things, and did not know what they are doing in the end, might be only for their medals so that they are able to show to their off springs when they retire.

Having said that, still we have to choose one out of the three candidates in front of us. If you believe in me, I would strongly suggest your good self to choose the one who :

  1. Can really reflect our views to the authority, like being able to be present and vote in the Policy Meeting of the Medical Council of Hong Kong on the issue of Linking CME with the license to practice;
  2. Would not breach the confidentiality of LegCo meeting in order to save the good name of our Profession;
  3. Would have invited the Chief Executive to give witness to the SARS select committee of LegCo;
  4. Would not finish his duty by barking all through the years for personal gain;
  5. Would not bark without clarification from interested parties, e.g. on the issue of outsourcing public out patient clinics recently;
  6. Would not discredit the standard of private medical service from that of the public openly in the media;
  7. Would not, as being so called “infectious disease expert”, refrain from attending important meeting organized by the Hong Kong Government on combating SARS in the early phase of the outbreak;
  8. Would not interfere with Public private interface;
  9. Would not do things just to please the Authority;
  10. And it is better still for him to be our member and speak our mind and air our voice.

I suppose we should vote for stability, and to this end we should vote for a change.

At the HKDU Council level, we have resolved to support our HKDU member to run for the coming LegCo. At the present moment, the only HKDU member among the candidates for the LegCo election in the medical functional constituency is Dr. Kwok Ka Ki. And he has been our faithful member for over  11 years.

So once again, vote for Dr. Kwok Ka Ki. At least, he would not behave like the other candidate who did not bother to join HKDU after repeated personal invitations and to meet our Council even before LegCo election for all sorts of excuses.

Dear Colleagues, we have made a miracle in the last HKMA election. It won’t be difficult for us to make another one soon. Your Council is now looking for your full support to our member on the most important date of this year.

I would be away from Hong Kong for sometime, but I am sure to join you when I fly back from London on 12th September to vote for Dr. Kwok Ka Ki.

Dr. Yeung Chiu Fat Henry

P.S.   Candidates for our functional constituency representatives in the LegCo are Dr. Kwok Ka Ki, Dr. Lo Wing Lok and Dr. Ma Kam Chuen.