LegCo House Rules change proposed to avoid filibustering

Pro-establishment legislators on Tuesday proposed amendments to the Legislative Council’s House Rules to tackle a longstanding problem of filibustering by the opposition that saw the legislature on the verge of paralysis for months.

The House Rules are guidelines drawn up by the House Committee to complement the Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Council, but they only touch on principles, leaving room for lawmakers to maneuver and bottleneck LegCo operations.

The House Rules cover practices such as the election of a committee chairperson or debates initiated by lawmakers, but do not specify the length of time that these procedures may be used. The rules change is expected to positively affect the operation of LegCo meetings.

Ho race CheungKwo k-kw an, a member of the Committee on Rules of Procedure who introduced the motion, said he hoped the amendments would close loopholes in the existing LegCo rules that the opposition lawmakers have abused over the past year.

The proposals include requiring that the nominee for a commission’s chair and vice-chair be handed to the LegCo Secretariat in writing before the electoral meeting, preventing opposition lawmakers from repeatedly nominating colleagues or even themselves and delaying the election process.

If a committee fails to elect its chairman within 30 minutes, the meeting shall be adjourned and the chair of the House Committee will appoint another person to preside over the election, they suggested.

Both were among common tactics used by the opposition camp this year to disrupt elections of chairpersons for committees. On Oct 9, it took the meeting more than an hour to elect Starry Lee Wai-king as the head of the House Committee, owing to the filibustering by the opposition camp, a repeat of last year’s melodrama that plagued the House Committee for over seven months.

Last year’s delay in the election of a chairperson of the House Committee, a key organ of LegCo, lead to a full-blown paralysis of the city’s legislature. The committee’s deputy chairman Dennis Kwok Wing-hang never began the election process, allowing opposition lawmakers to speak freely on things unrelated to the election in the meeting.

Lawmaker Priscilla Leung Meifun said the amendments would not obstruct the opposition’s ability to per form their duty. Instead, it would make them respect the meeting hours and move forward on important social issues.

Paul Tse Wai-chun, chairman of the Committee on Rules of Procedure, said its 12 members would consult for two weeks before submitting the document to the House Committee. Tse said the process is expected to be completed by the end of the year.