TOPICS:
(Note from RM on 10/21: I have reorganized your ideas under different headings. From now on when you add things please add them under the appropriate heading.)


WHO IS RUNNING FOR DISTRICT COUNCIL?

- The trend of younger candidates. Their youth is their strength. What can they offer that older candidates cannot? If the majority of voters are middle-aged to eldery citizens, how do they expect gain the voters approval? Should the citizens support the younger candidates to help the community build a stronger breed of politicians with fresh perspectives?

- what about the "young blood", running for the elections? the nomination period is going to start, so in two weeks we will have the names of the candidates. what are the ideas of the youngest candidates, running for the different parties?

- The District Council members can elect the Legislative Council member among themselves in the future, it may attract junior members of political parties to show off and pave their political road in Legislative Council. More on this: a new trend showing that more young candidates/junior members of political parties are participating in the District Council Election this year. The youngest candidate is only 21 years old, just fulfil the minimum required age for a candidate. What does this imply? Is this trend good to society?

- Keeping an eye on Charming (富榮), Yau Tsim Mong District: LegCo member James To Kun-Sun suddenly withdrew from the DC elections. What will the impact of his withdrawal be?

- Something interesting to note is that heritage conservationist, Ho Loy, is now officially a DC candidate for the Kwun Long constituency of the Central and Western District. She might be someone interesting to keep an eye out on.
-I think it would be interesting to interview Ho Loy regarding her conservation views as the lack of shared community space in HK is a real problem. For an island that is so well known for its sky-scrapers and business, one must not forget that people have to live within this urban metropolis and access to community space contributes to a healthy mind and body.

-80 more DC election nominations received. Eighty more nominations were received for the 2007 District Council election by Returning Officers of the 18 districts on Oct 3rd. This brings to 389 the total number of nominations since the nomination period started October 2. It will close October 15. One elected member for each of the 405 constituencies in the 18 districts will be returned in the November 18 polls. More details here.

- A quick look at some funny stories of last year's election, see how candidates competing to attract voter's eyes. Follow are some from the printed Singtao District Newspaper( Island District), we could try to find other similar stories.

- Some candidates dressed as ghost to break the tradition.
- A female candidate in Sai Kung in order to get more votes from women, show how she lost 11 pounds due to hard work for the social work.

- Many parties will nominate "new politicians" to run the coming DC elections. Will it be easy for them to win? Is it related to the increasing number of regristered voters?

-Candidates and Councilors Since there will be 405 seats for District Councilor election this year. How much percentage will be the new blood for each DC?

To make the work of the District Councils more transparent we should write a portrait/human interest story about a District Counicllor. What is his motivation to do the work? What has he activily done for his district (beside joining the DC meetings)? Which projects does he care for? What does he think about universal suffrage in 2012?

Experiences of candidates
Some candidates might have been living in a particular district for decades, and some are totally green to the job. How will their own understanding and interpretation of the districts needs affect the nature of their work?
- experiences is somehow important in performing the work in a district. Candidates must be very familiar with the district they work with so as to help and serve the community well. Many young candidates participated in the election this year. They may be very devoted to contribute to this community, however, how familiar they are to their district? Some of them have only worked in that particular district for a few months. Are they qualified to fulfil their duties as a District Councilor?

- Ex-movie star vs Dragon boat captain. In Southern District, the two candidates that squared off during the last election have been hard at work laying the groundwork for their respective campaigns again this year, but the question is: what have they actually done to benefit the people in the district? One of the candidates has been making a rather dubious claim that she was somehow responsible for the reduction in public housing rental rates.

-The whole issue of candidates’ gender and it’s effects in District Council election might be worth investigating. Are the man and woman candidates taking different roles and running for different things? Is woman’s role in Hong Kong politics different from man’s? Do Hongkongers like softer woman candidates better than edgy ones? More about this here.

- An investigative story where local residents are surveyed about the types of issues they would like dealt with at a local level. These issues could then be taken to the council candidates and we could ask them how they might realistically deal with these issues.

HOW THE ELECTION WORKS

-Compare the difference of the "automatic elected" candidates to the "normal candidates".

-The number "automatic elected"candidates has decreased from 74 to 41 this year. Why? Is it related to the appearance of new parties? Will the advantages of DAB decrease or not?

-All the 18 District Councils will be suspended from October 2 to December 31 to facilitate the holding of the third general elections in the district boards. How could the district management ensure the social stability and society inline?

-Money: Will the $3000 rise in maximum election expenses make a difference in swaying elector votes? What candidates have made the most of this increase

Election Expenses-the maximum amount of election expenses is $48,000. Is it enough for printing of posters and fly sheets? Or some candidates just spend little money on campaigning? How do they deal with election expenses?

-600 million financial support from Gov The DC will receive 600 million financial support from HK government this year, told by Central and Western District Councilor Chen Caixi. So based on what requirement do they distribute the sum to 18 districts? How much can each district get? Since it is confirmed that big organization backers are not allowed to financially support DC, so can DC satisfy people’s need with government’s money? Is it clear for people to know how much money they spend to work for local citizens? In which way?

-The potencial crisis caused by District Council Elections, just like financial corruption,unreasonable scheme, etc. If the elections cost unnecessary money from the taxpayers, who on earth is beneficial from the election.

- Is Hong Kong society apathetic towards politics in general and more specifically the district council elections? Do they feel there's no point in bothering? Or are they really are very involved and politically forward people - who's voice is simply not being heard or being ignored? To what extent does Beijing hold an influence over the democracy of Hong Kong and it's day to day running?
- Compare and contrast with the last district council elections and see if number of voters has increased or decreased? What has changed in this time and what conclusion can we draw from that? As of right now, we know that the first day of the 2007 nomination period brought in 309 nominations, compared to 380 in 2003. Is there something we can draw from this?

- Some voters confuse with the boundary of constituency in DC election. Is it the goverment's fault? Or it is the voters' responaibility?


WHAT DO THE DISTRICT COUNCILS REALLY DO?

- According to a rececent Ming Pao article, there has been an increasing trend of having full time District Councillors elected to serve the districts. Does being full time mean the residents are better represented? Or simply because a full time District Councillors gain an advantage of "being there" for the citizens most of the time, or are there other reasons?

In the run up to the District Council Elections, we could take one/each district independently and look at what the district council has achieved in the last 4 years of service. Then, move on to assess whether indeed therefore it is successful or superfluous. We could also do a survey with residents to assess whether or not issues they had concerning their district were tackled/dealt with and whether or not any real improvement had been felt.

-Balance of Double Duty. Many DC members are also Legislative councilors, and for more time they act rather with titles in Legco and parties. Then, what have they done to show voters they were also performing as DC? How can they balance their double duty?

- District councilors are asked to be more creative in their work in the community. While some district are doing minimal work (e.g. asking poor families to apply for Comprehensive Social Security when more can be done), there are others that are getting down and doing the dirty work like the Sham Shui Po district. What would be interesting to see is how exhaustive dc's use their resources. Are they really here to help? Are they spending more time on their campaign and winning votes instead of brainstorming ways to better the livelihood of their communities?
DC's signed a pledge to promote "Seven livelihood concerns" when elected in 2003. since then, have these seven concerns be dealt with? are they improving? are the solutions DC's offer the community "creative" enough?
reference article: "Be imaginative, councillors urged" (SCMP)

- Is the Government planning to interfere social agendum through strengthen the control in District Council?

- The Government enlarges the power of District Council by allowing them to allocate and mange the facilities, is it the implication of the increasing attention paid by the Government on District Council?

- How much influence does the district council have on policies affecting the community? What is being proposed by the districts in this election? What was promised previously and were the goals ever reached?
How effective are the district councils in making the communities a better place to live in? (does this tie in with public disinterest?)
- According to this idea:
an analyzing story, with one district as an example.
What were the worries of the citizens in the last 10 years? So did the DC politicans a good job and helped the local people? Was there a changeover of power after a DC election? If yes, did policy appreciable change?
It would be important for the story to talk to older inhabitants of the district- and of course the opinion of former DC politicans would be interesting. Are they satisfied with their work? Is there anything, they would remake?

Inter-district Cooperation
If large projects are to stretch between different districts, how will the processes go about? What if the district councilors are from different political affiliations? How will matters iron out between the both sides? This story can build on the background story on how does the district council function.

-In the past years, many district councils were involved in scandals such as corruption. So, is there anyway to prevent such things happen again?And how can people rebuilt trust with their servents?

- changes to the DC election system - new seats
- how much power does DC's really have
- do voters care about district council elections?

PARTY POLITICS
-Comparison of compaign plstform between political parties

- The consultation on government's green paper on political reforms ends on Oct 10. Some may think the universal suffrage issue will help the pan-democrats in winning more seats in the DC election, but will this factor work? Do people vote for them in response to the "green paper consultation"?

- After the 500,000 people demostration in 2003, that arouses the public demand for democracy, that resulted in a good quantity of seats obtained by the Democratic Party that year, however, without such incident this year, can the DP still gain the same amount of seats in the District Council Election?

- The District Councils were established to advise the government on district affairs and such, but why is it important now that voters know the political party from which the candidate came? Should we not put greater emphasis on their qualifications to serve the community? Are the elections and council becoming too involved in politics? How involved should district councilors be in politics?

- Apart from the new blood joining the usual political parties running for the DC election, in November, there will be groups like Mongkok Vegetable Wholesale Merchants Association, Hong Kong Miniature Football Association, Hong Kong Dragon Boat Association and the Hong Kong Flower Retailers Association, registered with the Electoral Affairs Commission running for the seats, does that mean there is much social concern from the public? or the usual political parties are doing not good enough in district affairs?

- Members of think tank, such as Savantas Policy Institute, will run the coming DC election and their target is the voters who are civil servants. Will it encourage candidates who run the election through non-traditional political party, like think tank?

- For the Democrats:
Is Hong Kong well-prepared for 2012 universal suffrage, while the Chinese government is so resistant to universal suffrage?
There are doubts that the democrats are too unrealistic or they just want to use this as a slogan to gain more vote.

- For the DABs:
They say they are more realistic so they fight for the 2016 universal suffrage. Does this mean that they will not participate in any campaign that support the 2012 universal suffrage? Or they just want to throw out a slogan that could differentiate them from their opponents?

Inside the major parties
- DAB (young DAB)
- The Democratic Party
- Civic Party
- Liberal Party
- The Frontier

- DC elections as test for party strength: DAB, Democrats, Civic Party etc.
- DC elections as test on universal suffrage?

- Are the two major parties in the election really striving for the sake of Hong Kong people?

- The hottest political topic now in Hong Kong is the universal suffrage.
Both the Democrats and DAB promised to try their best to reach this goal. In the district council election, the democracts use "2012 Universal suffrage" to draw more attention and vote. Meanwlie, the DABs use "2016 Universal suffrage" to fight back, saying that they are more realistic.

- Cooperation in the Democratic Camp: Despite negotiations, in 7 districts there will still be more than 1 democratic candidate competing against each other. What will the result be? Will the DAB or Liberal Party benefit from this?

- using the DC elections to encourage new political talent in HK:
here are some detailed questions or confrontations for the story:

What are the advantages for the young political talents in HK to go up the ladder toward higher position in the government comparing with other ways to enter the government?
With the increase of youth power in the district council, will the political culture in HK change accordingly? What influece will it exert on HK?

- As a newcomer, is it better to join the District Council or just a political party to be a well prepared/well regarded future Hong Kong politician? However, is it a MUST for the new blood to join the political parties in order to win the DC election?
If YES, then people are voting for the political party or voting for the CANDIDATES?

- Anson Chan on Saturday said District Councils need to be given "a real job of work" to do before they can be taken seriously. By dismissing the councils, do democrats risk losing a huge chunk of their potential support base to the DAB?

- will there be more support for parties supporting universal suffrage?
- what will Anson Chan's impact be on the DC elections? will her running for the legislative council by-election influence more voters to vote for pan-democratic district councilors?

-Financial significance of DC elections for political parties

- "Weaker" candidates in smaller parties: Are they happy with this cooperation?

- Does the outcome of the District Council Election depend on the candidates/ political party's campaigns run before? How was it in previous years? Who are the helpers that help running the campaigns? Students, volunteers, ideologists, etc.?

ECONOMIC AND LABOR ISSUES
- According to The Standard a discussion about minimum wage has started. People were protesting at several fast food restaurants at Tsim Sha Tsui yesterday. Minimum wage could also become a topic at the DC elections. How would this discussion affect the outcome of the election?

- according to a HKU POP survey of the district council elections for 1008 persons (interviewed by telephone), 54% said that livelihood issues should be the first problem to be tackled. How will candidates take this into account on top of the 25% who said that district problems should be attended to first? Who will monitor the district councillors when they are elected, to ensure that things are done for the majority? What if the things they promise during the elections fails to materialise? How will that affect the reputation of the candidate should he contest for the seat again?

- Every current event could have an affect on what is going to become relevant for the campaigns. Changing taxi drivers fares could become an issue for example - whether taxi drivers should still be allowed to offer a private service on lower rates or not ("taxi discount gangs").
Next to covering the on going discussions, it might also be interesting to do a general story about how much current events affect the election. Are current affairs more important than timeless topics, or long-term issues? How was it in previous years?