17 April 2005

Last week, I came to a difficult decision – one that leaves me with a feeling of profound disappointment - when I announced that I will not be standing in the July election to choose a new Chief Executive for Hong Kong.

I am disappointed because I was looking forward to a campaign that would have given me the opportunity to let more people know what the Liberal Party stands for and how we believe we can help to make Hong Kong a better place.

I am disappointed because I believe my participation in the election would have generated a healthy public debate about the key issues affecting Hong Kong and I believe we would all benefit from that.

I am disappointed because there is now the possibility that the July election may be uncontested, and it will not offer the opportunity for the public to judge the merits of candidates through contest.

So why did I decide not to stand? The fact is, the decision was taken for me by the people of Hong Kong.

For the past two weeks, we have carried out extensive public opinion polls and the message from those polls has been constant and categorical.

It is not the first time we have used this method to gauge the public mood. Last year, I carried out surveys for two to three months before deciding to run for a geographical constituency. From the outset, the feedback then was encouraging.

This time, we asked interviewees a simple question – if an election was held tomorrow, would you vote for Donald Tsang, James Tien or neither. Around 60 per cent said Donald Tsang, six per cent said James Tien and 34 per cent said neither.

This was not a one-off poll. It was done every day over a period of two weeks and involved interviews with over 6,000 people. If the polls had gone against me by a ratio of around two to one I would consider giving it a try but with a 10 to one margin, there is simply not enough time for me to make up the ground before the election.

I do not believe in running for the sake of running. The Liberal Party believes that if you are to run in an election, you must have a genuine chance of winning or at least a fighting chance. If I did not have the support of the Hong Kong people, how could I convince the 800 members of the election committee that I am the best choice for Chief Executive?

Without clear mandate of the people, even if I had the support of the election committee, how could I go ahead with only six per cent of people thinking I could do the job? At best it would be an uphill struggle.

The result of the poll is not on my side, and that was the key factor for the decision for me not to stand. But it was not the only factor. I consulted my Party, I sought the views of the members of the election committee, and I sounded out Beijing.

I think Beijing ’ s views are important, for the candidate chosen by the members of the election committee, would have to be appointed by the Central People ’ s Government. He would also need to be someone who could secure Beijing trust if he is to be an effective Chief Executive for Hong Kong.

As it turned out, they neither encouraged nor discouraged me from standing. However, they did tell me clearly that they thought Donald Tsang is a very suitable candidate at this moment. I could sense that their preference was for Donald.

There are hard lessons for the Liberal Party and myself to learn from this experience. We accept that we have got to do much better. We have to work harder to win more support from the people. We must find a way to persuade our community that we have the ability to govern Hong Kong – and we can see from the results of the poll that we have some way to go before we reach this stage.

Even though I will not be standing in the July election, there are others who might come forward, and I hope they will. I still believe a contested election will be better for Hong Kong, even though I do not believe it is right for me to stand.

Whether there is a contest or not, however, Hong Kong needs to have an open debate on the issues facing us so that we can make our views known on what kind of Chief Executive we want and what we want him or her to do for us.

For this reason, I hope Donald Tsang will declare that he is standing as soon as possible and tell us what his policies will be, the same applies to all other candidates who wish to stand. We need time to debate and discuss the key issues facing Hong Kong and there is no better time for them to be aired than now. After all there ’ s only two or three months before the election.

We need a declaration, we need a debate and we need it to start now. We may not have the leadership contest we wanted, but we do have a priceless opportunity to talk in depth about the important issues ahead of us and to show that Hong Kong people have the maturity to be the masters of their own destiny. I urge Mr Donald Tsang to grasp that opportunity.