Don’t make it too hard for members to run: Fred Li

Democratic Party member and former lawmaker Fred Li says the party could be making it too difficult for members to run for Legco, after a new internal nomination procedure was proposed at a general meeting on Sunday.

No decisions were made at the meeting over whether the party should take part in the December elections, but it was proposed that anyone interested in running must secure at least 10 nominations from each of the party’s five district branches.

Li said it doesn’t make sense to raise the threshold when time is tight.

“If you don’t want members to join elections, you create higher thresholds. It’s obvious. If you want to discourage members, you set up more thresholds. How is it possible to find 10 nominations from each branch within such a short time?” he said.

“After I heard the proposal, I thought, are you kidding?” he said during an RTHK programme on Monday.

Speaking on the same programme, the party’s chairman, Lo Kin-hei, said the higher threshold is not unachievable.

He noted that the party used to conduct opinion polls before it nominated candidates for the Legco elections but said there’s no time to do so this year and this is why it has to introduce a higher threshold to ensure anyone who wants to run is qualified.

But Lo said so far, no one had indicated an intention to run.