Rejecting public wishes is undemocratic
The Legislative Council was scheduled to begin deliberations over proposed amendments to its Rules of Procedure on Wednesday but opposition lawmakers have refused to heed public calls for cooperation.
Indeed, they did everything they can to delay the start of the Rules of Procedure amendment debate. The opposition camp’s desperate attempt to delay the inevitable came as no surprise because they have vowed to defend their “rights to speak” all along and ignored mounting public pressure on them to stop obstructing the special administrative region government with filibusters at the expense of Hong Kong society. The question is: How long are they prepared to keep testing the patience of Hong Kong residents?
It is no secret that the proposed amendments to the Rules of Procedure resulted from indiscriminate and persistent filibustering of government bills by opposition lawmakers in recent years. Pro-establishment parties were in fact forced by the opposition to table amendments to existing Rules of Procedure. The great majority of local residents also demand rampant filibustering be effectively reduced as soon as possible. Present rules allow opposition lawmakers to filibuster any bills they want to without majority public support by taking advantage of certain technical loopholes in Rules of Procedure.
Opposition lawmakers have been pretending to be oblivious to growing public resentment toward their arrogance and insisting they have “public support”. But behaving like ostriches does them no good at all. The Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, run by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, conducted a public opinion poll by phone and collected legitimate responses from 722 Hong Kong residents aged 18 or above on Nov 21 to 25. The results of the poll, released on Tuesday, show 50.8 percent of respondents do not support filibustering of government bills by LegCo members, against 14 percent who do.
Meanwhile, 49.4 percent of the respondents are in favor of amending the Rules of Procedure to limit the extent of filibustering and 30.1 percent oppose the move. The poll also found 58.6 percent of respondents opposed filibustering of the government’s co-location arrangement bill for the Express Rail Link by the opposition camp, against only 22.2 percent who support it.
The CUHK poll is but the latest of many in recent years that found overwhelming majority support for amending the Rules of Procedure and objection to wanton filibustering of government bills at the expense of Hong Kong’s socio-economic development. Such polls are undeniable proof the opposition parties have been countering instead of respecting public wishes all these years.
Although they have yet to reveal why they would rather defy the popular will and suffer the consequences than do the right thing, many local residents still believe they can save themselves by abandoning their undemocratic obsession with filibusters.