政黨政治 Political parties find it difficult to mature

昨天南華早報的社評談及香港的政黨政治，這是一個我非常關心的議題。因為觀諸全球，所有健全的民主政制下都是政黨政治，但香港的政黨卻名不正言不順，其法律地位只是「有限公司」而已，而且一旦當選特首，必須辭去任何政黨身份。

當然我們可以說香港可以有獨特的政治文化，但我真的不相信，實現了普選後，如果仍然沒有成熟的政黨政治，香港的民主政制可以有效及順暢地管治，所以我一直都主張香港應儘早制定政黨法。印象中民建聯的曾鈺成以前曾多次撰文主張制定政黨法，但自他擔任立法會主席後就沒再聽他提起此事。

就此我有個陰謀論想法：中央刻意矮化政黨，壓抑政黨坐大，其是不想行政主導的體制受到在野政黨的強大壓力，因為在目前的民意上，如果實行普選，泛民所佔的支持度遠高於建制派；另一更主要的原因則在於：中央更容易控制一個沒有強大政黨支持的特首。

我以在網誌略提過一下政黨政治，有興趣者可見：http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/our_wch/article?mid=8715

Yesterday's SCMP editorial discussed one of my big concerns: the party politics in HK. Our city has a somewhat weird political structure here: the political party is a fact of life but not recognized by the law coz all of such party is, as the editorial rightly says, done through the Companies Ordinance, and our CE can't have any "political affiliations". 

There's no other liberal democracy has such limitation. And we don't see there's any other mature and prudent democracy without political party. Of course we can have our own unique political culture, yet I really don't see how the will-be full democracy will work well in HK if we don't have legitimate party. It's the main reason why I believe the party law is needed to pave the road for HK's future. To my memory, the chairman of the Legco, Trsang Yuk-shing , a DAB member, actually advocated a lot about setting up the party law. But after he was become the chairman of the Legco, we seldom see him raise this issue again. 

I have conspiracy theory here: the Central gov't doesn't really want to see any strong political party(no matter pro-democracy or pro-BJ) to be able to organize people. One of the reasons is that a mature political party may have strong pressure on the executive-led gov't, the main reason is to make sure HK is under control. 

Political parties find it difficult to mature
LEADER Mar 21, 2011
It is perhaps unsurprising that in a city where the political structure's space for genuine public participation does not match the people's education levels, affluence and political awareness, new political parties are born with relative ease. Public grievances keep rising, and political parties are born to represent and reflect those sentiments. Setting up a political party, which is usually done through the Companies Ordinance, is literally as easy as setting up a company. And with the prospect of a more democratic legislature in which the people can have a greater say over the composition, there has been talk about the possibility of more new parties, such as the current discussion between various pan-democrats about a Labour Party. However, while it is easy to set up parties to represent people's sentiments, past history in Hong Kong has shown it is far more difficult to develop a party into an institution that can actually serve its members and supporters by implementing policies for their benefit. The League of Social Democrats came into existence with much fanfare in 2006. But barely three years later, two of its key members had left with a substantial faction of supporters to form a splinter group. And while the league found many young supporters and represented the frustrations of many socially disadvantaged groups during those three years, one has to wonder how effective it was in helping implement policies it thinks would benefit its supporters. The likelihood of that happening has now decreased even further. Meanwhile, an analysis of party finances, conducted by corporate governance activist David Webb suggests that unless you have the backing of wealthy establishment figures, "party financing remains at its infancy". Financial support still comes mostly from donations and for pan-democratic parties these donations fall sharply during non-election years. "On these modest budgets, the parties cannot possibly hope to run meaningful internal think tanks or research units to support their decisions on policies," leading to knee-jerk reactions to short-term issues rather than principle-based proposals and well-researched criticism of government policies, concludes Webb. Part of the blame must be laid on the government's unwillingness to create a climate conducive to the growth of parties. Earlier this month, it opposed allowing legislative amendments to allow the chief executive to have political affiliations. It then failed to gain enough votes to support the temporary budget funding and complained that pan-democrats did not switch sides and make up the numbers as if it were a game of schoolyard soccer. No doubt, this would not have happened if the administration had formal alliances with parties in the legislature. The reality is that the current political climate makes it easy for new parties to gain support for saying the right things, but difficult to mature into real institutions that are ready to offer real solutions to governance. It is hoped that the Labour Party, arguably more a consolidation of forces rather than a splintering of old parties, will be able to mature into such a party, especially if it receives the support of the Confederation of Trade Unions which would give the party a solid backbone. But still, before concrete moves are made to set up the Labour Party, it is hoped that those involved in the discussion are giving priority to assessing whether another party would ultimately be better at serving people's interests and not just become another "shell party" through which they can prolong their political careers in the legislature. http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=29f61ad5dc3de210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Columns+%26+Insight&s=Opinion