{"id":12313,"date":"2018-03-09T23:02:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T15:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=12313"},"modified":"2018-03-09T23:02:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T15:02:56","slug":"legco-byelection-tony-tse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2018\/03\/legco-byelection-tony-tse\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Tse Wai-chuen wants to win seat back, back more large-scale infrastructure projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Erica Li<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap2 dropcap\">T<\/span>ony Tse Wai-chuen wants to get back into the Legislative Council so that he can back large-scale infrastructure projects in Hong Kong. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The former legislator for the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape Functional Constituency says such projects are crucial for the city\u2019s development. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey\u2019re long-term investments, high-return investments. Hong Kong would die without them,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He suggests that 30 per cent of public works should be allocated to the local small and medium sized enterprises. \u201cOnly the locals [can] understand the problems of Hong Kong,\u201d says Tse, throwing a jab at his Dutch-born rival for the seat Paul Zimmerman. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 63 year-old surveyor represented his sector in the legislative council from 2012 to 2016, before being defeated by Edward Yiu Chung-yim in the 2016 legislative council election. Yiu was subsequently disqualified after deviating from the official oath during his swearing in. \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tse says he made many policy suggestions which he describes as beneficial to the industry and society during his tenure, but that they were rarely followed. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He thinks better use can be made of local talents in solving \u00a0problems in the industry, \u201cWhenever projects are delayed or over-budget, it\u2019s because the professionals are not put to good use,\u201d he says, adding this includes the problems with the construction of the Express Rail Link. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the issue of housing, Tse supports more sandwich class housing because he thinks it would improve the upward mobility of Hong Kong\u2019s middle class. \u00a0\u201cThe sandwich class could have the chance to move to private housing after a few years,\u201d Tse says, \u201cthen the social disparity could be reduced.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In light of the controversy surrounding the illegal structures a the home of Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng in January, Tse was quick to criticize his by-election rival Paul Zimmerman for having unauthorized building works, \u201cHe did apologize, but apology is not enough when it comes to breaking the law,\u201d quips Tse. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zimmerman has since removed the illegal structures and has stated that he has never tried to hide the fact that they were unauthorized, adding that he registered them under the \u2018Reporting Scheme for Unauthorized Building Works\u2019 with the Buildings Department in 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tse \u2013 who boasts 42 years of experience in the sector &#8211; also has other questions about Zimmerman\u2019s credentials. He says his rival does not even have the right to vote in the functional constituency as he does not have the relevant professional qualifications. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tse is also dismissive of \u00a0the \u201canti-disqualification\u201d platform that the pro-democracy candidates have placed at the centre of their platforms in this by-election. He accuses them of \u201cmoving the goalposts\u201d. Tse says the rule of law is the cornerstone of Hong Kong and the democrats should respect the court&#8217;s decision on the disqualifications instead of shifting the narrative when judgements do not go in their favour. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other candidate running in the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape functional constituency in the 2018 Legislative Council by-election is incumbent Southern District Councillor Paul Zimmerman.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Edited by Yi Yeung<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Tse Wai-chuen wants to win back his former Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape Functional Constituency seat so he can back more big infrastructure projects for Hong Kong. Tse lost the seat to disqualified lawmaker Edward Yiu Chung-yim in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[938],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legislative-council-by-elections-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12315,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12313\/revisions\/12315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}