Poll shows strong support for co-location

The Hong Kong-mainland joint-checkpoint arrangement at the West Kowloon Station of the Express Rail Link has the support of 63 percent of people surveyed in the city, a new opinion poll released on Tuesday shows.

The survey — commissioned by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong and conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Centre — was released a day before the Legislative Council starts to deliberate the GuangzhouShenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (Co-location) Bill.

The survey interviewed 878 Hong Kong adults by phone in late April. It showed that 63.3 percent of respondents support the arrangement — where one-fourth of the station will be designated as a Mainland Port Area where national laws apply. Only 30.1 percent of respondents opposed the plan.

The survey also showed that about 66 percent of respondents consider co-location “the most convenient and efficient plan” for Hong Kong people to travel to the mainland by high-speed rail.

More than half of the respondents do not think the co-location plan violated the “one country, two systems” principle. Only 28 percent said the plan violated the Basic Law, the special administrative region’s constitutional document, but 46 percent said they did not think it did.

The latest poll is in line with a similar survey conducted by the DAB in September last year which found 58 percent of respondents supported the plan.

Responding to public support, DAB legislators said they were confident the co-location bill could be passed before LegCo’s summer recess starts in the middle of next month. If this happens the high-speed rail can start operating in late September.

“We hope all the lawmakers can debate this in a pragmatic and practical manner,” said Ben Chan Han-pan, lawmaker and member of LegCo’s Panel on Transport. “We urge the opposition lawmakers to put people’s will first and not to filibuster.”

Agreeing with Chan, lawmaker Vincent Cheng Wingshun, representing the Kowloon West geographic constituency, said residents in Kowloon were so familiar with progress of the XRL that they sincerely hope it can start on time.

To give full play to the efficiency of the high-speed rail, the party suggests the SAR government lower ticket prices and related service charges. It should also offer discounts in the early stages of operations and allow e-payments.

Chan also discussed a recent incident where the last car of a train shifted out of position after a trial run. He said he believed the MTR Corporation was not proactive in reporting details of the incident to the public; this was “unacceptable”.

Chan said he hoped the MTR could regularly report to the public on the progress of the trial runs and investigation of the incident to eliminate people’s doubts over XRL safety.

LegCo will resume a plenary debate on the co-location bill on Wednesday after the designated bills committee spent more than 40 hours in 20 meetings scrutinizing it from February to last month.

The Legislative Council is scheduled to begin the second reading of a draft bill tabled by the special administrative region government that, once in effect, will allow mainland immigration, customs and quarantine officials to enforce relevant national laws in a designated “port area” inside the West Kowloon Station of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link. Commonly known in short as the “co-location arrangement”, the practical law is designed to save passengers the trouble of going through the same clearance procedures again when they reach their mainland destinations. This is clearly why it has enjoyed popular support since the beginning.

However, opposition lawmakers have been going out of their way to prolong the co-location arrangement legislative process for no valid reason. Their only counter argument now is that letting national laws be enforced in Hong Kong violates the Basic Law, despite the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, which is the highest body of State power that holds the exclusive right to interpret the Basic Law, determining that the arrangement does not contravene the Basic Law — specifically the stipulation that no national laws except those listed in Annex III of the Basic Law shall be enforced in Hong Kong — because the laws apply only inside the port area legally leased to mainland law-enforcement departments concerned.

In light of the situation, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong recently conducted an opinion poll to gauge public sentiment toward the issue, and published the results on Tuesday. The most important finding of the poll is that 63 percent of respondents support the co-location arrangement for passengers’ convenience; while some 30 percent are against it. The survey also shows 66 percent of respondents agree the co-location arrangement is the best way to complete multiple clearance procedures in one stop; while only 28 percent don’t agree. Similar ratios are shown in questions as to whether the co-location arrangement violates the Basic Law or weakens the “one country, two systems” principle, with those who say “no” outnumbering those who say “yes” by wide margins. The latest poll results are unsurprising as the co-location arrangement is the only logical option.

It should be noted that this opinion poll’s findings are consistent with quite a few previous ones conducted by other pollsters since the government proposed the co-location arrangement to central government authorities and obtained official approval last year. Most local residents understand it is absolutely essential to fully utilize the XRL for the benefit of Hong Kong residents by simplifying the clearance procedures as far as humanly possible. Opposition lawmakers will only further alienate themselves from the great majority of Hong Kong society if they insist on fighting against instead of heeding popular wishes on this matter.