Topic: “Young Blood” Phenomenon

Stage 1 - do a more detailed research on all candidates and put them into age groups.

- lay out the general information of young candidates: education background, occupations, and parties.

- tables and charts will be used to make statistics more vivid and interesting.
The purpose of stage 1 is to provide readers a general understanding of the young blood phenomenon in District Council Election. In terms of the age grouping, I would like to divide all candidates into three categories:

1. The first category will be young candidates, whose age are under 35-year-old. The reason I make it 35 is there’s a sub-committee of DAB, called Young DAB, and it’s members should be under 35-year-old. Although most of other parties also have youth committee, their websites are not as informative and active as Young DAB. For examples, majority of the Youth Committee of the Democratic Party website is still under construction and the website of Young Civics shows that they don’t a formal committee and there is less frequent activities.

2. Candidates over 6o-year-old will be the second category, since according to the World Health Organization, the definition of “old age”  is 60.

3. The last category will be candidates whose age are between 35 to 60.

Stage 2 - contact ideal candidates & interview 3 to 4 of them  with focus of their initial motivations & political platforms.

- both audios and photos will be available of these young candidates.

There are several ideal candidates for interviews. Since all of them are young, most of them of their own blogs with their activities and , which are linked to their names.

Three are from Civic Party:  Thomas Yu Koon Wai, 24, the chairman of Young Civics as well a member of the Executive Committee of the Civic Party; Ng Gene Bond,  22, co-founder of Hong Kong Secondary Students Union; Adam Cheng Tsz Kiu, 21, the youngest candidate from the Pro-democracy Camp.

Two from DAB: Yiu Ming, 21, who just turned to 21-year-old at the last day of nomination; Siu Ka Yi, 24, a pretty young woman who’s dedicated to community works.

One thing I would like to point out is that DAB has a separate website for 2007 District Council Election, which has a detailed profile of its candidate. The statistics in the profile shows young candidates between 20 to 30 constitute 11.3% of their candidates.

Stage 3 - do a analyze on all the information of young candidates I’ve obtained and try to answer questions like: personally decisions or party strategies? future trend or temporary phenomenon? implication of HK politics?

- interview an academic or a expert for his/her opinions on “Young Blood” phenomenon.

Victor Jap, a political science graduate, is working as a paralegal in a prestige law firm in town.
He’s also a part-time law student, aspiring to become a lawyer one day. Because of his background and occupation, Victor follows the news about the District Council election and prepares for the voting on Nov 18th. He has his own opinions about the District Council, which for him is an important government body without enough power and attentions. In terms of choosing his ideal District Councilors, he prefers lawyers since they are accountable and sensitive about political issues. However, he insists that he won’t vote for someone who doesn’t know the community at all. He also finds some candidates distributing their flyers to passers-by at train stations are very annoying. Different people have different preferences. How will candidates fulfill voters’ appetite?

interview-w-victor.mp3

Today I interviewed Maggie in class. Here’s the audio:

Maggie

Pan-democracy campaigners organized a mass rally to advocate 2012 Universal Suffrage on Sunday afternoon. Thousands of people gathered in Victoria Park and participated in this event to show their support. People used different colors of umbrellas to form the number “2012″, blue as the background and yellow as the numbers. 2012 is the earliest possible date for the practice of universal suffrage in HK.

First, people opened umbrellas and moved them up and down according to the organizers’ orders. Then, they held umbrellas as high as they could for more than one minute, in order to make a world record. People were sweaty but they were still trying their best just to express their strong desire for “one-man, one-vote”.

Later, people started a “March for Democracy” from Victoria Park to the government building, which Anson Chan also joined to show her support. Her competitor for the coming by-election, Regina Ip, criticized the Pan-democracy earlier for only organizing demonstrations but not making any practical suggestions for universal suffrage.

On this purticular issue, I’m with Regina Ip though I don’t always agree with her. Just think about this: what will a world record bring to the actual introduction of universal suffrage in HK? Unfortunately nothing. Universal suffrage as a symbol of full democracy is more than slogans and desires. It requests a well prepared government as well as its people.