A race of one: HKU student with pro-Occupy movement past in line to lead university union
Althea Suen tells Post in exclusive interview that, like the incumbent, she would ignore university’s confidentiality rules if public interest at stake
A 20-year-old who is set to become the University of Hong Kong’s next student body leader has vowed to ignore the university’s confidentiality rules if the public interest is at stake.
Speaking exclusively to the Post in her first interview yesterday, year-three student Althea Suen, the only candidate for the HKU student union presidency, also proposed revamping the university’s governing council by allowing councillors to elect their own chairman.
HKU’s governance crisis worsened last month after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying appointed former education minister Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung as the council’s chairman. Li was regarded by critics as a heavy-handed agent tasked to bring HKU under Leung’s control.
READ MORE: Surrounded: University of Hong Kong students besiege governing council meeting, demand talks with Arthur Li
Last week, hundreds of students besieged the council’s meeting as it failed to specify when it would initiate a review of the council’s structure.
Li later accused student union president Billy Fung Jing-en, also a member of the council, of violating the council’s confidentiality rule and lying by telling protesters that the council refused to start a review.
Suen said if she became president, she would follow Fung’s example as a whistle-blower.
“The principle of justice and the public’s right to know override the so-called confidentiality agreement when the council makes decisions that hurt public interest,” she said.
Suen also said Fung was not a liar, as he told students that “the review panel would not be set up immediately”.