A pair of young pro-democracy activists and Beijing apparatchiks appear to have at least one thing in common: the ability to shoot themselves in the foot.
In this they are being aided and abetted by Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英), who has repeatedly shown by word and deed that he serves Beijing, not his constituents in Hong Kong.
While one can applaud the courage and determination of Youngspiration’s Yau Wai-ching (游蕙禎) and Sixtus “Baggio” Leung (梁頌恆), whose antics on Oct. 12 as they took their oaths of office led to their oaths being invalidated, along with three other lawmakers — architecture sector representative Edward Yiu (姚松炎), and Lau Siu-lai (劉小麗) and Wong Ting-kwong (黃定光) of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong — Yau and Baggio Leung’s actions have led to a court case and the threat of more direct involvement by Beijing.
After Legislative Council (LegCo) President Andrew Leung (梁君彥), a pro-Beijing lawmaker, said that he would allow the five to retake their oaths on Oct. 19, the chief executive and the territory’s Department of Justice launched a legal bid to stop the Youngspiration pair from doing so. The LegCo president is listed as a defendant in the case alongside Yau and Baggio Leung.
The chief executive reportedly made the decision to seek to invalidate the status of democratically elected lawmakers without consulting Beijing, while the justice department said it was acting because “the government should take a hardline approach to stop disreputable people from debating” in the LegCo.
The move outraged many in the territory, who believe that it is a political process issue that could have been resolved within the council without resorting to court action and risking Beijing’s ham-fisted intervention.
However, on Thursday night, just hours after a day-long hearing on the court case wrapped up, Hong Kong’s government was notified that the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) had decided to intervene, a move that had been rumored for several days and one that is a direct threat to the territory’s independent judiciary.
The NPC said it would issue an interpretation of an article of Hong Kong’s Basic Law that states legislators must swear allegiance to “the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.”
What that interpretation will be appears to be a foregone conclusion, given that the nationalist Global Times, which is part of the People’s Daily family, has already run an editorial proclaiming that removing Baggio Leung and Yau from the Legislative Council “reflects the will of the entire nation... We are sure the country will make it happen.”
It also appears that the NPC will try to pre-empt the judge in the case by handing down its interpretation before he can deliver a ruling.
Hong Kong has already paid a heavy price for the NPC’s “interpretations” of the Basic Law — it was one such pronouncement in August 2014 on who would be eligible for this year’s LegCo elections and next year’s chief executive election that led to the months of street protests in the territory.
Not only would another NPC ruling be yet one more violation of Beijing’s “one country, two systems,” it would undermine international confidence in the territory’s autonomy and its judicial system.
Unlike China’s judicial system, Hong Kong’s has long been respected because of its independence. Destroying that would irreparably damage Hong Kong.
Just two months after the LegCo elections and 31 years before the expiry of the “one country, two systems” promise of 50 years of political and judicial independence, the territory’s political system risks implosion. That would serve no one, least of all the voters who elected Yau and Baggio Leung with the hope of having their voices heard in the LegCo.
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