LegCo by-election not for separatists
Nominations for another Legislative Council by-election, the second one this year, started on Tuesday for the Kowloon West geographical constituency. Recent by-elections — one more next year — have arisen from the disqualification of six elected legislators who showed no sincerity when taking the oath of office in 2016, thus breaching the Oaths and Declarations Ordinance as well as Article 104 of the Basic Law, as confirmed by the ensuing interpretation by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.
Only one seat is up for grabs this time, but potential candidates from across the political spectrum have already been gearing up for another battle that will determine whose hands the veto power in the legislature — which the opposition failed to win back in the previous by-election — will fall into.
Although the actual polling is on Nov 25, related activities were already abound before the two-week nomination. As expected, politicians with differing political affiliations and beliefs and from different camps have been negotiating and coordinating among themselves in order to come up with the candidates with the best hope of winning.
As before, the nomination process requires the nominees to declare, by signing a separate form, their acceptance of the special administrative region as an inalienable part of China or face disqualification. The idea is to ensure the allegiance of those to be elected to the legislature lie with the right side — the SAR and the country.
We cannot allow our lawmaking body to become the platform for Hong Kong separatists to spread their ideas which would undermine national security and territorial integrity. President Xi Jinping reminded us when he was in Hong Kong last year that this is a red line that no one should cross.
Preventing separatists from taking part in the by-election may be easier said than done. They have become much more alert now that they have had a number of nominees disqualified for being found to be upholding the cause of Hong Kong independence or self-determination — another form of separatism in disguise. They are now changing the wording of their political charters and taking back their previous remarks. They hope Hong Kong people will forget what they have done and said before. But the authorities have been watching them closely all along, as seen in the case of banning the Hong Kong National Party. They cannot just delete their words and deeds from the record as if they are just deleting a computer file.
We all remember very well those people who plunged our society into chaos during the illegal “Occupy Central” protests in 2014 and the Mong Kok riot in 2016. We also remember those who invited foreign powers to interfere in our domestic affairs. And we remember those who have openly declared their intentions to tear the SAR away from the motherland. Hong Kong voters and returning officers are not as forgetful as some may wish.