The Chief Executive’s Question Time
MR CHAN CHUN-YING (in Cantonese):
President. Chief Executive, you held the first Community Dialogue session in September 2019 with 150 participants from all walks of life expressing their views. Yet, after the dialogue session, some of the participants who spoke during the session were doxxed maliciously and chaos occurred outside the venue, the Community Dialogue was therefore suspended. Last year, due to the epidemic and the prohibition on group gathering, it is understandable that the Community Dialogue could not be resumed. However, ever since the outbreak of the epidemic, many large-scale activities and seminars have been held online using Zoom with participants being able to gather together before the camera, and the results were quite good. In addition, after the implementation of the National Security Law, social order has been restored; following the improvement to the electoral system, the Government will also need to focus its efforts on handling livelihood and economic issues in the future. Chief Executive, will you resume the Community Dialogue to listen to people’s views on policy implementation of the Government and their demands by means of not only face-to -face dialogue but also Zoom using big screens?
CHIEF EXECUTIVE (in Cantonese):
I thank Mr CHAN Chun-ying for his question. In fact, all governments need to listen to people’s views in the course of their administration. Only by doing so can we ensure that our policies are effective and to the point. I have attached great importance to the communications with the public since taking office, but as Mr CHAN said, many things happened in the past two years, making this kind of communication very difficult. Even before what had happened after mid-2019, many public consultation activities at district level encountered strong opposition and nuisance. I believe that after the enactment of the National Security Law and the improvements to the electoral system, Hong Kong will embrace a new situation which will better facilitate the interaction and communication between government officials and the general public. I am very willing to strengthen such kind of interaction and communication in our work in the future; especially after the pandemic. Mr CHAN also mentioned that there is an increasing number of face-to-face conversations online―not really face to face, but we can see each other’s expression actually―and this kind of conversation is very effective. In fact, concerned officials and I have never stopped holding Zoom meetings, or so-called webinar, which is a mean of exchange and communication, but we use it mainly for meetings with certain sectors. I will seriously consider widening the use of this kind of communication in the future so that we can listen to more opinions. Thank you Mr CHAN for his suggestion.