HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability systemBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system. POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly.

According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be October 22, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest results on the four subjective freedom indicators will be released.

According to the latest figures released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating registered in early October (October 2-7) was 49.0 marks, representing an increase of 0.5 mark when compared with that of mid-September, which was statistically insignificant. However, the figure has increased for three consecutive times since mid-August, with an accumulative increase of 2.0 marks. Meanwhile, the popularity ratings of CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and FS Antony Leung Kam-chung were 62.2 and 53.9 marks respectively. Compared with the figures registered in early September, the rating of Tsang has dropped slightly by 0.5 mark, which was statistically insignificant. Leung's rating, however, has continued to drop for four consecutive times since late June, with an accumulative drop of 7.3 marks. On the other hand, the popularity rating of SJ Elsie Leung Oi-sie has increased by 1.3 marks from that of early September to become 50.4 marks, yet the rise was marginally insignificant.

As regards the popularity ranking of Directors of Bureaux, because it is POP's long established practice not to treat ratings of persons with less than 50% benchmark recognition rate as representative, 9 out of 11 Directors of Bureaux can be meaningfully discussed in this survey, and the two groups have been listed separately in our summary tables. According to our latest findings, the two most popular officials were Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works Sarah Liao Sau-tung, and Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, attaining 61.2 and 61.0 marks respectively, both leading with quite a wide margin from the rest. Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Yeoh Eng-kiong, and Secretary for Economic Development and Labour Stephen Ip Shu-kwan ranked third, fourth and fifth, with popularity ratings of 55.8, 55.2 and 54.6 marks correspondingly. The remaining four positions went to Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen Ming-yeung, Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology Henry Tang Ying-yen, Secretary for the Civil Service Joseph Wong Wing-ping, and Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Frederick Ma Si-hang, attaining 53.0, 52.9, 52.1 and 39.0 marks correspondingly. Ma's popularity rating has further dropped 4.2 marks in the month past. Since the two remaining officials, Secretary for Constitutional Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung and Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping, failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate, their ratings are not taken as representative.

The new survey reported in the POP Site today is a random telephone survey conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of the survey is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling errors of the ratings of CE, CS, FS and SJ are plus/minus 1.4, 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 marks respectively, while those of the ratings of Directors of Bureaux with recognition rates reaching 50% are less than plus/minus 1.6 marks. That means if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not comment on the findings at this stage. Such an arrangement would be reviewed when more resources are available. Please note that Dr CHUNG Ting-yiu Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is solely responsible for the work published in the POP Site, which does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong.