The Election Committee (EC) members from the sports, performing arts, cultural and publishing subsectors have great expectations in chief executive (CE) candidate Donald Tsang.

EC member Timothy Fok said this yesterday after 30 members of the subsectors met Tsang at his election office in the morning.

After the one-hour meeting, sports subsector EC member Victor Hui said they had wanted the government to increase financial resources and venues to promote sports development.

Timothy Fok, the representative of the four sectors in the Legislative Council, agreed that financial resources and venues were the major problems.

Take Cantonese opera, for example. This traditional performing arts has been declining in recent years due to shortage of performing venues in Hong Kong, he said.

Talking about more financial resources, Fok quoted Tsang as saying that the government has limited resources and the fiscal position has only improved recently.

The government will be very careful in funding and will not build any "white elephants". In this connection, it prefers development funds like the recent film development fund to recurrent funding.

"He strongly emphasizes the role of the government as a 'small government' which only helps improve the business environment," Fok told reporters.

"We also told him we hope the government would simplify the work procedures because we are only volunteers (who cannot afford a lot of time).

"He said it is not always possible to have dedicated staff handling particular issues in reply to our concern that civil servants are transferred to elsewhere after they have familiarized with certain policies.

"He also said several times it is important to do things 'with the heart'. We have great expectations in him and hope he will implement our suggestions upon re-election," Fok said.