Any Hong Kong permanent resident aged 18 and above who ordinarily resides in Hong Kong is eligible to be a Geographical Constituency Elector.

The deadline for registration for the next District Council election is July 16. Forms are available at Post Offices, and the Citizens Party will be running a voter registration campaign over the next few days both in Lamma and at the Central Pier 4.

To vote out the Fong's (the clan that is running Lamma as their personal corporation), we need to get new voters.

where are the fung's from? or do u mean the fong's?

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Learn more about the Lamma Animal Welfare Centre

Yes, excuse my phonetic spelling. As in Fung Lui/Fong Loi or whatever, the construction mogul who is concreting the island and gets a cut from every contract. (Fixed spelling in first post.)

Email from Save Lamma:
"Getting someone concerned and knowlegable on the District Council is one of the unprecedented solutions to the never-ending cascade of bad developments on Lamma Island that have plagued this beautiful island."

But first you need to register to vote before July 16:

These are some of the ways in which to register for the Nov elections.

Pick up a form from the post office or HSBC.
by fax (call the hotline 2891 1001)
or download from http://www.info.gov.hk/reo/pdf/reo1_e.pdf
or go to http://www.esdlife.com (but e-cert is needed)
<HR>
Email from Alex Chan, Chairman of the Citizens Party, a great person, who's very engaged in Save Lamma, the helipad issue and the Ring Road opposition. He'll be running in the District Council Election:

Dear Friends,

(1) Vote Registration for the 2003 District Council Election Year 2003 is an election year in Hong Kong. According to the Government's tentative schedule, the District Council Election will be held on Sunday, November 23, 2003. The voter registration is running from now to July 16, 2003.

In Hong Kong, it does not matter what passport you hold, or whether you're a Chinese or an expatriate, you can register to vote in both the District Council and the Legislative Council Elections, if you:

- are 18 years old or above,
- hold a Hong Kong Permanent Resident Identity Card,
- have a Hong Kong residence address and (ordinarily reside in Hong Kong),
- are not disqualified (such as serving a criminal sentence).

Non-Chinese HK permanent residents can also stand for DC Elections, as there is no restriction placed on nationality or ethnicity.

You should have every reason to register and cast your vote in the upcoming November DC Election. Article 97 of the Basic Law states that District Organizations are not political organs and are "....to be consulted by the Government.... on district administration and other affairs, or to be responsible for providing services in such fields as culture, recreation and environment sanitation."
Therefore, District Councils deal with the issues that are directly related to your living environment and quality of life for yourselves, families and children.

Even the DCs do not have real executive power, they do has a significant influence in the Government decision making process, since by definition, the Government has to consult the District Council and take its view as representation of public opinion.

Some of you may feel detached from your current DC. Take the case of Lamma Island as an example, the Islands District Council endorsed a massive reclamation project of the Yung Shue Wan (YSW) Harbour when in fact more than 90% of the residents were against the plan. The Government was not aware of the residents' true view until it received a flood of objection letters.

More currently, the Islands District Council supports the construction of a ring-road in the YSW community which will need land resumption of 46 lots but most residents in the neighbourhood know nothing about it until the Home Affairs Department posted a brief notice on the Islands District Bulletin Boards, as the last step in the planning exercise.

You may wonder if there is any use of voting in the DC election if the track record of your current DC member showed that he or she has never adequately represented your community? One of the major reasons is that some of the DC seats have been occupied by community leaders of significant vested interest who have never been challenged by a serious body of voters. The average voter turnout of the past DC elections (e.g. 1999 and 1994) was less than 25%.

Your vote will really count. Unlike the five huge LegCo geographical constituencies (1 million+ people each), there are a total of 18 District Councils. Each district constituency, that returns one elected member, is very small (about 18,000 residents). If you look at past records, the number of votes in various districts ranged from a only few hundreds to about two to three thousand.

Many past candidates accumulated sufficient number of votes through personal network by knowing the cluster of active voters. So your votes can really help to support those new candidates who, free of vested interest, really want to open up the DC as a proper conduit for reflecting public opinion and facilitating a collective community vision and consensus among residents.

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