Opposition condemned for HK LegCo quagmire
The central government bodies that oversee matters affecting Hong Kong have strongly condemned opposition lawmakers, whom they accuse of blocking the work of the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s House Committee.
The spokesperson for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council called the situation deplorable and in the interest of selfish political gain at the expense of the entire special administrative region.
Some opposition lawmakers, taking advantage of the rules of selecting a chairperson for the committee, have seriously undermined the function of the legislature, the spokesperson added.
The House Committee helps organize council affairs, coordinating the work of scrutinizing bills and subsidiary laws through its subcommittee and getting them through to the council for approval. The committee has not had a chairperson since October, when the legislature began its session for this legislative year.
Bills are being held up by the impasse, and this has a direct impact on people’s livelihoods —
adding to the pain of last summer’s violence and the current COVID-19 pandemic, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson urged legislators to do their duty and respond to the needs of people — because that’s what they were elected to do in the first place.
The spokesperson at the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong SAR expressed similar outrage, saying it is unsettling to see how a small clique of opposition lawmakers can hamstring the work of LegCo with such a disregard for and to the detriment of all people in Hong Kong.
The spokesperson added that after six months of unrest on city streets, people want to get their lives back to normal. Now people whose livelihoods were threatened by riots are threatened again by the pandemic.
Earlier, 41 lawmakers issued a joint denouncement of opposition lawmaker Dennis Kwok Winghang. They accused Kwok, who has been presiding over the election for chairperson of the House Committee, of abusing his position to block the election. The work of the House Committee is at a standstill, stalling some legislation for establishing anti-epidemic-related bills, among other bills.
A total 14 bills remain in limbo, without having been debated or deliberated. Eighty pieces of subsidiary legislation also have been left hanging because of the ongoing chaos within the committee.
The Liaison Office spokesperson called the perpetual stalling tactics an outright blasphemy of the role of lawmakers. He added that those involved in the obstruction have wreaked havoc on the city’s vital interests and let down the voters who elected them.
The office respects lawmakers’ rights laid out under the Basic Law and the Rule of Procedures set out to facilitate the legislature’s operations. But it expressed earnest hopes that lawmaker will use the rights in due and proper ways just as they said they would do when they were sworn into office, the spokesperson said.
Obstructing the legislature’s operation may be an act of misconduct in public office for violating their respective oaths of office, the spokesperson said.
At this vital juncture of combating the pandemic, all lawmakers should stand in solidarity with the SAR government and the community to ride out the rough times, the spokesperson stressed.
Solicitor Kennedy Wong Ying-ho agreed that opposition lawmakers could be liable for misconduct in public office by going against their oaths when they block the normal operation of the legislature. By doing so, they also impair the public interest and may be disqualified from their seats if such cases were to be brought before the court, Wong said.
Political pundit Lau Siu-kai, vicepresident of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, said the friendly reminder from the central government should be a wake-up call to Hong Kong residents. If the opposition camp were to take control of LegCo in the upcoming election, the camp would use the victory to take over the governing power of Hong Kong, Lau warned.
The city’s largest political party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, and the city’s largest labor union, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, both berated the opposition camp’s stalling procedures as a “political suicidal attempt to take down the city with them”, in separate statements issued on Monday.