JMSC0007 - by Robin Pang

In the coming district council election, Momo and I will be covering Central and Western District - the Peak.

Background & Elements

What makes the race for the Peak constituency a hot race this year was a comment by legislator as well as chairman of the Liberal Party James Tien Pei-chun early this month following MTR Crop CEO Chow Chung-kong had nominated barrister Tanya Chan Shuk-chong of the Civic Party to run for the seat. James Tien said his party would “look closer” into the bills that MTR Crop is going to file to the Legislative Council in the future. Chow made an apology to James the day after. However, after this blunt comment on the suspicious exchange of political interest, James was under fire. He publicly apologised and took back his statement two days later.

The Peak constituency has long been captured by the Liberal Party and one of the candidates this year, Mark Lin, a lawyer, was the current district councilor seeking another term of office.

To complicate the matter, a third independent candidate Louis Leung Wing-on, who is an accountant, jointed the fight. However, it is believed that it will be a battle between Mark, an executive council member of Liberal Party, and Tanya, who is likely to run for the 2008 legco election.

Besides the controversial statement made by Tien, the race was also important in the sense that which party is able to solicit more support from the upper class population in Hong Kong. With the growing popularity of Tanya Chan, Civic Party may be able to challenge Liberal Party’s long claimed “good relationship” with the business sector.

Potential interviewee

Mark Lin, Tanya Chan, Louis Leung, political commentators and voters are all potential interviewees, who will be able to give us useful information in our story covering the election.

Photos 

For the advancer story, we would like to take pictures of the candidates carrying out their publicity campaign, particularly when they are delivering leaflet on the street as during which we can observe the response of the people. Moreover, depending on the policy agenda of the candidates, we may also want to shoot photos about relevant places in the district.