Hong Kong this week took another big step through the looking glass into the farcical universe that is China’s idea of a rule-of-law government.
All 15 of Hong Kong’s remaining opposition lawmakers on Thursday submitted their resignations to protest the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee’s endorsement on Wednesday of a resolution that gave the territory’s government the power to dismiss Legislative Council (LegCo) members without having to go through the courts.
The resolution requires the removal of any LegCo member found to have violated their duty of allegiance — ie, their oath of office — or endangered national security. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) administration was quick to announce that four lawmakers who have called for foreign governments to sanction the Hong Kong and Beijing governments were immediately disqualified.
While most of the resignations will not take effect until Dec. 1 to allow the legislators time to deal with administrative issues, such as laying off their assistants and closing their offices, the LegCo’s pro-Beijing lawmakers have been quick to say they were looking forward to fast-tracking several contentious proposals that the pro-democracy block might have contested.
Lam told a news conference on Wednesday that she had asked Beijing to clarify how lawmakers could be disqualified, as there was confusion over whether those who have been banned from seeking re-election could serve out their extended term after the election scheduled for September was postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, in a clear demonstration of the kind of thinking required of a Beijing toady, Lam rejected concerns that the LegCo would become a rubber-stamp body — like the NPC — because she welcomes “diverse opinion,” just seconds after she told reporters that “we need to have a political body that’s composed of patriots.”
What should be more worrying for Hong Kongers was her statement that her government would amend constitutional and electoral regulations to bring them into alignment with the Standing Committee’s resolution.
Hong Kong’s sole delegate to the Standing Committee, as well as some pro-Beijing LegCo members, on Thursday talked about how such amendments could impose the same kind of restrictions on the territory’s district councilors or even its civil servants, even though Article 104 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law only requires oaths of allegiance to be taken by the chief executive, LegCo and Executive Council members, principal officials and judges.
Given that the pro-democracy camp won all but 60 of the 452 district council seats in last year’s elections — largely because of widespread unhappiness with Lam’s government and Beijing’s interference — such a move would have much more of an impact than the ouster of pro-democracy LegCo members, who have always been a vocal but tiny minority. Therefore Lam’s talk about needing to amend regulations should be seen as a threat to create a mechanism for disqualifying or unseating elected district councilors, which would disenfranchise not only the councilors, but all the residents who voted for them.
Beijing — and Lam — trying to legitimize their exercise of power and the complicity of the pro-Beijing LegCo members cannot disguise their drive to integrate Hong Kong into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) party-state. The CCP, like all other communist, fascist or authoritarian governments and dictators, cannot comprehend that a person can be a patriot and still disagree with the government or its policies.
When a government feels the need to disenfranchise wide swathes of its population to ensure a legislature or other political body is made up solely of those it considers patriots, it has become the epitome of unpatriotic. Rule by law is not the same as rule of law, and blind obedience is not patriotism.
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