LegCo committee set to wrap up co-location bill
The Legislative Council’s Bills Committee is expected to finish scrutinizing legislation on the Hong Kong-mainland joint checkpoint for Hong Kong’s Express Rail Link terminus early next month, according its chairwoman.
Legislator Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, who chairs the Bills Committee in question, said the timetable for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (Co-location) Bill was set after consulting members about upcoming meeting schedules.
Ip said scrutiny on draft bills is expected to be finished within three months; the city’s legislature faced a great deal of work and time remaining for the committee was “very limited”.
To scrutinize the bill on jointcheckpoint arrangements, the committee — comprising 64 members — spent 24 hours in 12 meetings, starting from Feb 12. One scheduled meeting was adjourned as opposition lawmakers were absent.
Ip said that compared with the process of scrutinizing the Shenzhen Bay Port co-location bill in 2007, the XRL co-location bill took up a lot more time on discussing articles, principles and merits.
The 16-member Bills Committee on Shenzhen Bay Port Hong Kong Port Area Bill finished scrutinizing the bill in 16 meetings within seven weeks, she explained.
Ip said she hoped the committee could finish deliberation by early next month and table the bill to LegCo’s House Committee for further scrutiny before introducing it to LegCo’s plenary meeting.
“Otherwise, I would wrap up the meeting as the chairwoman,” Ip said.
Ip invited all 64 legislators of the committee to discuss future meeting schedules on Wednesday but only 13 showed up, including herself. No opposition members attended.
Ip said she welcomed opposition lawmakers discussing the latest timetable with her.
On April 13, Secretary for Transport Frank Chan Fan said co-location bill scrutiny needed to be finished by early next month. This is to provide time for the rest of the legislative process and ensure the XRL can start operations in September.
The co-location arrangement designated one-fourth of the XRL’s West Kowloon Station as a Mainland Port Area governed by national laws to give passengers one-stop clearance and increase transport efficiency.
Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, chairperson of the Legislative Council Bills Committee, on Wednesday said she hopes the committee will complete deliberation of the draft bill on the co-location arrangement for mainland immigration, customs and quarantine officials to operate according to relevant national laws inside the terminus of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link in West Kowloon by early next month, so LegCo can wrap up the legislative process in time for the Hong Kong section of the XRL to open for service as scheduled. The 26-kilometer Hong Kong section is the final stretch of the XRL, which will make Hong Kong a permanent part of the nationwide high-speed railway network, and is scheduled to open in September at the latest.
It is no secret that opposition lawmakers have been doing anything and everything they can to delay passage of the co-location bill as long as possible, in total disregard of overwhelming public support for the arrangement, which is designed to simplify immigration, customs and quarantine procedures for passengers boarding high-speed trains for mainland destinations. Writing the bill into law is the last of three steps Hong Kong must complete before the XRL begins serving its purpose legally for the benefit of many people. That is why the opposition camp is hell-bent on delaying the conclusion of the legislative process because they know it is impossible for them to block it this time, as they did the electoral reform plan back in 2015.
Remember how elated the opposition camp and its cheerleaders everywhere were after “pan-democrat” lawmakers used their “critical minority” to veto the special administrative region government’s electoral reform bill, denying the Hong Kong public the opportunity to elect the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017? Well, a result of their “political coup” turned out to be the loss of several LegCo seats previously held by “pan-democrat” veterans after the 2016 general election. Talk about reaping what one sows. Even more incredulous is that the opposition parties have shown little if any aptitude for learning from their own mistakes after losing six LegCo seats since then because they are still pursuing the impossible dream of proving “one country, two systems” unworkable by dashing one popular wish after another.
Many members of the public are demanding that the LegCo Bills Committee do the right thing and finish deliberating over the draft co-location arrangement bill on schedule to ensure the conclusion of the whole legislative process on time. To do so, pro-establishment lawmakers must put the interests of Hong Kong society as a whole ahead of their own and do their absolute best to attend LegCo meetings and vote the draft bill through each and every step of the legislative procedure. It is their responsibility and the least they can do.