Co-location decision has sound legal basis: Lam

Some members of Hong Kong’s legal profession with “incorrect views” on the co-location arrangement should “take an objective and practical second look” at the solution so it can be carried out as scheduled in 2018, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor advised on the last day of 2017.

“It was the special administrative region government that proposed building the Hong Kong section of the high-speed rail link”, said Lam in response to questions during a fitness event held by the Hong Kong Elite Athletes Association on Sunday morning.

“The central and SAR governments have been able to find the solution and it has a full legal basis,” she added.

The Hong Kong Bar Association on Friday issued a statement questioning the legal foundation of the NPCSC decision on Wednesday and its conformity with the HKSAR Basic Law.

Lam said she has heard different views on the co-location arrangement at the West Kowloon Station, but did not agree with many of them.

“But there was one point I was sympathetic to,’’ she said.

“We will not sacrifice the policy of ‘one country, two systems’ or damage an important constitutional document such as the Basic Law for the convenience of opening a rail link,” Lam stressed.

No such rail link existed when the Basic Law was adopted. If a certain stipulation must be located through its text today, it is forcing others to do the impossible, she explained.

The three-step process to adopt the co-location plan, with its full consultation, complicated administrative and legislative steps, and engagement of decision-makers at different levels is “fully in line with the spirit of ‘one country, two systems’. It does not contravene the Basic Law,” the CE emphasized.

“It remains within the scope of our high degree of autonomy whether the SAR eventually is willing to have the co-location arrangement or not,” she added.

Different surveys over past months have concluded that the majority of the Hong Kong public supports the solution. The Legislative Council in mid-November also passed a nonbinding bill to back up the project.

Some people in legal circles argued that the NPCSC decision is “without legal basis”. These people failed to accept that there is only a single system in current constitutional mechanisms — the NPCSC is the supreme organ of State power, she said.

“I’m calling on these people to be objective and practical and adopt a more open attitude,” she added.