Why is Procom trying to distance itself from CP?

The Professional Commons (ProCom) and the Civic Party are in fact in the same boat though under different flags. However, ProCom members running for Legislative Council (LegCo) seats are invariably trying to distance themselves from the CP. Why? Because the CP has repeatedly acted against the overall interest of the Hong Kong public in recent years, including blocking the Hong Kong part of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HKZMB) project, seeking right of abode for foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) and permanent resident status for children born here to non-local parents from the mainland.

These positions have offended the great majority of local residents, particularly the middle class. Therefore ProCom candidates must hide their close ties with the CP in order to win LegCo seats in the upcoming election. However, a fake is a fake by any other name and its disguise must be removed.

Many people have pointed out over the years that the ProCom is in fact a peripheral organization of the CP and its relationship is very much like that between the Democratic Party (DP) and the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU). The ProCom was founded in March 2007 to help gather support for Leung Ka-kit, CP candidate for the Chief Executive Election that year, by forming a political group to rally all opposition members of the CE Election Committee and those who are pro-opposition behind Leung.

Take a look at the ProCom’s key members: its chairman, Lai Kwong Tak, is a vice-chairman of the CP in charge of external affairs; while Tanya Chan, another member of the ProCom’s leadership core, is a CP lawmaker in the LegCo. Several members of the ProCom’s strategy committee are also close allies of the CP. In short, the ProCom is more like a branch of the CP than anything else.

The ProCom has cooperated with the CP seamlessly over the years, in a series of politically-motivated campaigns against the government, including a proposal to build the high-speed railway in an area removed from urban districts that would reduce the railway’s economic benefits significantly, just because the CP was against the original government plan from start to finish. It also supported the CP-orchestrated judicial review of the HKZMB’s environmental impact assessment report that suspended the project for months, costing billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money because of the delay, and earned the label “political animals in professional disguise”.

Currently several ProCom members are running for LegCo seats in the functional constituencies and trying very hard to hide their close ties with the CP. Legislative councilors representing functional constituencies are obliged to work in the interest of professional sectors and act as bridges between these sectors and the SAR government, but ProCom lawmakers have always teamed up with their CP counterparts to obstruct the administration at the public’s expense, including that of various professional sectors. Now their intimate relations with the CP have been exposed and are threatening its members’ chances of winning in the upcoming LegCo Election, enough reason for them to bury the stinking trail as best they can.

Not long after the HKZMB case last year, the CP set off another “blast” that threatened to open the door for tens of thousands of FDHs and their families to become Hong Kong permanent residents and place them in direct competition with the local people for all resources. The judicial review against provisions of the Immigration Ordinance angered many local householders who hire FDHs. A large number of those locals who hire FDHs are middle-class professionals.

The CP used to attract professionals because its elitist billing had a certain appeal, but after a series of politically-motivated, anti-government campaigns at the public’s expense, most professionals realized the party is not what it seemed. Many professionals chose to say no to CP candidates in the District Council elections last year and handed the party a resounding defeat across the board at the polls.

Since ProCom candidates are vying for LegCo seats primarily in functional constituencies where professionals concentrate, they simply cannot afford to blow the cover off their kinship with the CP, which has become bona fide “election poison” by now and is expected to hurt a lot of its allies during elections.