{"id":8229,"date":"2015-11-20T14:21:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T06:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=8229"},"modified":"2015-11-20T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T06:22:16","slug":"engineer-patrick-wong-chun-sing-district-council-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2015\/11\/engineer-patrick-wong-chun-sing-district-council-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineer Patrick Wong Chun-sing joins the election"},"content":{"rendered":"

The civil engineer wants to use his expertise to stop the district from building more pavilions that can\u2019t keep people out of the rain<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Macau Mak \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Engineer<\/a>
Engineer Patrick Wong campaigns in Tai Koo Shing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>On a weekday evening before the election, Patrick Wong Chun-sing<\/a> distributed flyers next to Taikoo Shing Road, not far from his competitor Marcus Tse Tsz-kei from the New People\u2019s Party<\/a>. Several residents stopped to encourage him and tell him they are already familiar with his platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know many residents living in Tai Koo Shing East and some of my secondary school classmates and teachers also live here,\u201d Wong says. The 40-year-old civil engineer was born and raised here and moved out only a few years ago because of family reasons. \u201cMany of them said they support me when I decided to join the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professionals have been participating more actively<\/a> in social movements, as society became more politicized. Wong was president of the University of Hong Kong Students\u2019 Union in 1997, and his passion for politics was reignited in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cFewer and fewer politicians and officials are willing to speak the truth,\u201d Wong says. \u201cThe problem got worse after the national education incident in 2012.\u201d For example, Wong explains how the government blamed the plumber at the beginning of the recent lead-water crisis, while trying to hide loopholes in the system of oversight.<\/p>\n

Wong would like to bring integrity into the District Council. He believes the public still trusts professionals like him because integrity is one of their core values. Wong also thinks that being an independent candidate gives him an edge, as political party members sometimes have to toe the party line even if it goes against the interest of their constituents.<\/p>\n

Wong says his engineering expertise would help him serve the district \u2013 for example, he can monitor building works and road constructions. As an engineer, he says he understands how much local infrastructure costs, and how to design it well. He points out how a recently-built pavilion that could not shelter people from the rain, was quickly demolished. The public still does not know how much it cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cA professional engineer would not allow such a construction to happen,\u201d Wong says. Wong adds he will make official Council spending much more transparent, because he says the people can only hold their Councillors accountable when they have all the details.<\/p>\n

Apart from serving the district, Wong\u2019s election platform also focuses on fundamentally changing the electoral system. He supports genuine universal suffrage in the elections for the Chief Executive and the Legislative Council, as well as scrapping functional constituencies.<\/p>\n

Residents in Tai Koo Shing East are mainly middle class, and Wong says most of them have strong views on district issues as well as the electoral system. \u201cThey seldom scold each other over differing views. I enjoy having rational discussions with them,\u201d Wong says, recalling his experiences of talking to both supporters and opponents. \u201cThe discussion is fruitful.\u201d<\/p>\n

He does not want to speculate on his chances of winning the election on Sunday, and promises he will continue serving the district through Our Community at TaiKoo (OCTK)<\/a>. He founded OCTK with his friends earlier this year, and OCTK organised activities and lectures in the community to bring people together and make them aware of social issues. Wong says it is too early to decide whether or not he will join the next election if he loses this one.<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s participation may have set a precedent and encouraged professionals to run for election. \u201cI have faced many new challenges upon joining the election for the first time, as I have to handle huge campaign workload within a short period of time,\u201d Wong says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key is to engage your supporters and residents,\u201d Wong adds. \u201cNo matter how good you are at your job, running an election campaign is always a team effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy every bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professionals are getting more vocal about politics in Hong Kong and engineer Patrick Wong is taking it one step further. Wong is standing in the 2015 District Council Election as a candidate in the Taikoo Shing East constituency. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[389],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-district-council-poll-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8229","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=8229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8233,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8229\/revisions\/8233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}