Hong Kong's political opposition yesterday urged the likely head of the territory's next legislature to give up the Chinese congress seat she also holds, due to an alleged conflict of interest, but she has reportedly refused.
Rita Fan (范徐麗泰) is expected to defeat opposition candidate Albert Ho (何俊仁) as president of the Legislative Council with support from other pro-Beijing lawmakers, who hold a majority in the new council elected Sept. 12 under a system critics called rigged.
Business ties
Ordinary voters picked lawmakers for 30 seats, while the remaining 30 were chosen by special interest groups, such as businessmen and doctors, who tend to side with Beijing.
The opposition won three new seats for a total of 25.
The new legislature was set to be sworn in and choose its head today.
Opposition lawmaker Emily Lau (劉慧卿) yesterday claimed that Fan, who was also president of the previous legislature, had tried to protect China's congress by rejecting an opposition motion criticizing Beijing's decision to rule out full democracy for Hong Kong in the near future.
Conflict of interest?
Fan "isn't protecting the independence and integrity" of the Hong Kong legislature, Lau said.
Grilled by fellow lawmakers on Monday, Fan insisted she was unbiased and refused to resign, newspapers reported yesterday.
She denied that her decision to reject the motion criticizing Beijing was related to her role as a Chinese lawmaker, and said the motion had contained inappropriately harsh accusations, the Apple Daily reported.
But pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人) said there was a conflict of interest.
"How can we know whether you are for the interests of the [China's National People's Congress] or the interests of Hong Kong, when you ban people from criticizing the NPC again in the future?" he said on Monday.
Fan couldn't immediately be reached for comment yesterday.
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