Opinion | Time to end the clown show and chaos in LegCo

By Alan Leung, Blogger specialized in current affairs

On Friday, the first House Committee of the extended term of Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) meeting re-elected (Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong) DAB chairperson Starry Lee Wai-King as its head. Pro-Beijing lawmaker, Ma Fung-Kwok, presided over the House Committee election. Lee was re-elected after she secured 39 votes while Ma was re-elected as Lee's deputy after securing 32 votes.

The election process was constantly disrupted by pan-democrats' filibustering efforts to slow down the proceedings. The pan-democrats kept nominating legislators from both sides even when the nominees refused it, some of them repeatedly which led to some heated exchanges between the two sides.

The voting only proceeded after Ma declared the nominations closed at around 3:35 pm, saying legislators had wasted too much of the two hours allotted for the vote. One ballot had "unjust" scrawled on it and another had "SAVE12", a reference to a group of Hong Kong fugitives detained in the mainland.

At the height of the exchanges, Democratic Party's legislators Lam Cheuk-Ting and Wu Chi-Wai nominated pro-establishment legislator Junius Ho, who declined while labelling Lam a "low-level ICAC investigator," a reference to Lam's previous position of an investigator at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Lam complained against Ho's remark claiming his remarks were an "insult of his rank" at the agency. Pro-democracy lawmakers then blast Ma as a "low-level" politician, presiding over the ballot after Ma dismissed Lam's complaint claiming it wasn't an insult as Ho was only stating his subjective views.

The first meeting of the Finance Committee of the extended LegCo was held right after the House Committee. Insurance sector legislators' Chan Kin-Por was re-elected as the chairman of the Finance Committee of the extended LegCo, whereas finance sector legislators' Chan Chun-Ying was elected as his deputy.

Apart from Chan Kin-Por and Chan Chun-Ying being nominated in their respective rounds of the election, the other 11 nominees of the two rounds of elections were all pro-democracy legislators. Both Chan Kin-Por and Chan Chun-Ying were re-elected with a vote of 36 and 37 votes respectively.

During the counting of votes, pro-democracy legislators chanted the slogan "free the 12 Hongkongers", referring to the 12 Hongkongers being detained by mainland authorities on suspicion of crossing the border illegally and organizing such a crossing, as the suspects attempted to jump bail and escape to Taiwan.

The pro-democracy legislators' constant childish acts, creation of chaos, abuses of the council's normal process, and wastage of the council's time is turning Hong Kong's Legislative Council into a circus. Many of their actions are what we would expect from young children, while others from thugs and certainly not from supposedly highly educated and civilized lawmakers.

Furthermore, when these pro-democracy legislators brought a completely unrelated issue such as the 12 Hongkongers being detained by mainland authorities into the council's committee leader nomination and voting process, it proved their only intention was to cause disruption to the council and waste taxpayers' money.

Any Hongkongers detained as suspects by mainland authorities in mainland China are outside the jurisdiction of the HKSAR Government. Even if the suspects are wanted in Hong Kong, there is very little the HKSAR Government can do due to the absence of extradition arrangements. Moreover, it was these same pro-democracy legislators who led the protest against the extradition legislation last year.

Any clown show in the Hong Kong Legislative Council will have zero effect on such issues. If any pro-democracy legislators have a genuine interest in providing help or support to these 12 Hongkongers, they should be contacting the Hong Kong Macau Affairs Office and negotiating with the related Chinese departments in Mainland.

It's imperative that the Hong Kong's Legislative Council refine, adopt and strictly enforce the council's code of conduct. Any legislators who filibuster, create chaos and disturbance should be immediately thrown out of the session after a single warning to avoid delaying the council's normal process.

Serious or severe breaches of an official Code of Conduct for LegCo members should result in automatic disqualification from the Office. The Council will only return to normal and Hong Kong can only move forward when these troublemaking legislators realize they will need to bear the consequences for their own actions.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.