Legislative Councillor
In August 2004, Cheng decided to seek a political position, and joined hands with Andrew To Kwan-hang, then secretary of The Frontier and Wong Tai Sin District Council member, to contest the Legislative Council election in Kowloon East constituency. The swift approval of his application to relinquish his Canadian nationality by the Canadian government qualified him to run for the election. Cheng won a seat with more than 73,000 votes, the most obtained among the candidates. In 2008, he announced that he would not stand for re-election.
During his service as a lawmaker, Cheng was a member of the Public Accounts Committee and chairman of the Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting. He was considered a pan-democrat in the legislature, but differed from the pro-democracy camp over the constitutional reform in 2005 and the nomination of his good friend Donald Tsang Yam-kuen as chief executive.
Read more about this topic: Albert Cheng
Famous quotes containing the word legislative:
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)