At the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s oath-taking on Oct. 12, newly elected lawmaker Sixtus “Baggio” Leung (梁頌恆) arrived brandishing a banner that read “Hong Kong is not China,” while his colleague Yau Wai-ching (游蕙禎) altered the wording of the pledge, swearing allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation.” Edward Yiu (姚松炎), meanwhile, added a line about fighting for justice in Hong Kong.
Furious at the lawmakers’ actions, China’s National People’s Congress on Monday unanimously passed an interpretation of Article 104 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, according to which at least two of the lawmakers, considered sympathetic to Hong Kong independence, would be barred from being sworn in and would lose their public office status. The interpretation was not well-received among Hong Kongers.
Taiwanese appear to be both amused and curious about the incident. Amused, because they have seen legislators using swearing-in ceremonies to make a political point before; curious, because the same things they saw in Taiwan three decades ago are now happening in Hong Kong, and neither the Hong Kong government nor Beijing seems to be heeding the calls for democracy. Their autocratic approach is likely to do little more than stoke the flames of discontent.
In Taiwan, during the legislative swearing-in ceremony in 1984, Yu Chen Yueh-ying (余陳月瑛) and Cheng Yu-chen (鄭余鎮) refused to raise their hands and take an oath of allegiance, saying they did not understand the wording of the oath they were required to take.
In 1990, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators prevented the oath administrator, then-grand justice Weng Yueh-sheng (翁岳生), from entering the chamber and covered his head with protest banners. The swearing-in ceremony was unceremoniously brought to an end in the ensuing chaos.
In 1992, the DPP contingent left the legislative chamber en masse and proceeded to swear allegiance to Taiwanese.
In 1996, lawmakers occupied the speaker’s podium with the national flag behind them and read out a revised version of the oath, breaking the rules to show that they did not recognize its wording.
Lawmakers are invested in their roles through two kinds of legal qualifications: active and passive. They earn active qualification by standing as a candidate and being elected, and accomplish the passive part by taking an oath of office. The former serves as the basis for a legislator’s legitimacy; the latter is one of the conditions confirming the legal status of a legislator. When both are fulfilled, there are no problems.
However, when one of them is missing, the situation becomes complicated.
Legislators who lack the former, yet perform the latter, would have no legitimacy. However, when they have the former, but forgo the latter, then it becomes a political issue, in which an elected official and their supporters are at odds with the system.
Nowadays, if legislators take issue with taking the oath, the situation would be addressed more wisely, and elected officials would only be permitted to perform their duties after they have signed an oath of allegiance.
Taiwan would not disqualify someone with no legal basis for doing so, for it would only exacerbate the situation.
The Hong Kong government’s and Beijing’s insistence on playing hardball runs counter to a 2004 Hong Kong court ruling on the legitimacy of legislators. Addressing the issue through legal channels might be relatively unproblematic, but using an interpretation by China’s National People’s Congress — an outside authority — to prevent legislators from being sworn in is like waving a red flag at a bull, and would only amplify public anger against the authorities.
These actions might suppress anti-Beijing legislators in the short term, but in the long term it will only benefit the Hong Kong independence movement. Beijing only needs to look at what happened in Taiwan to understand that.
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