Three Wishes

(Gabriel Yiu) I'm not a superstitious person but one should live with objectives. Wishes could be an extravagant hope or an excessive expectation, or they could form the goal of one's striving.

As this year ends, I would like to make three wishes to set as goals of my striving for the next year.

My first wish is, I want a government with integrity that does not lie to the people.

A Chinese proverb says, A government cannot last without the trust of its people. An untruthful government is also an incompetent government.

BC's deficit has been increasing drastically, from $968M in February to $1.4B now, but our government keeps increasing spending on advertisement. The advertisement for the premier's so-called "Job Plan" alone costs $15M. The more disturbing part of such an act is that these ads are "partisan ads" using taxpayer's money, and the content is untruthful.

Even though many pundits and economists pointed out that the job figures cited by the premier are exaggerated and incorrect, our unrepentant government still keeps spreading the misinformation.

Every time when I heard the government ad claimed to have achieved a "balanced budget", I frowned. Since the last election, this government has not balanced a single budget! How could a government be that untruthful and unabashed?

My second wish is, our politicians and political leaders should set as their goal governing well. There are political leaders who care only about politics and election from the first day in office. A lot of people may not see the difference, but it lies in this: Governing is to put the interests of the people and of the province first, whereas electioneering politicians seek instant benefit for their political leader and their party. They are shortsighted. The policies of such politicians are often announced in a rush without going through the process of rigorous study and consultation. Their purposes are to make a good impression and to get a photo opportunity. Such a style of government makes a lot of noise to little effect. It goes for show, not substance. The measures taken often work out to be ineffective or disastrous, making the government look stupid, wasting the province's resources, and missing real opportunities.

My third wish is, to eliminate the major weakness of western democracy, i.e. its financing. If you take a look at many of the government's policies, you can see that, coincidentally, the beneficiaries of those policies are also generous contributors to the governing party. For example, the lucky buyer of BC Rail was a major supporter of the former premier. The private energy suppliers who have been selling electricity to BC Hydro, with rates double and triple that of the market price, happened to be donors of the BC Liberal Party.

I truly believe that a platform policy of the NDP which advocates banning corporation and union donation to political parties is a good way to remove financial influence on government decisions.

Although I've made three wishes, if I look deeper, I only need to make one wish and all my above wishes will be fulfilled - to elect an NDP government in the next provincial election.