Hong Kong legislator Ma Fung-kwok speaks to China Daily during an exclusive interview on Sept 23, 2020. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)
HONG KONG - Hong Kong legislator Ma Fung-kwok sharply criticized the opposition lawmakers who he said are not being upfront about their desire to stay in office for the extended term in the city’s legislature.
Ma referred to the move by opposition lawmakers who said they will use a public opinion poll to decide whether they will stay in the Legislative Council until the postponed LegCo election takes place next year.
Some opposition lawmakers have deferred making a final decision on whether to serve the extended term. Ma said they are being hypocritical by using the poll as an excuse to claim they have some ostensible support to justify their decision to stay on. He said they need to show they have such support, to deflect political pressure from the radical opposition lawmakers who want to boycott the council and have proposed that the opposition quit en masse.
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The extension of the LegCo term has presented a dilemma to the opposition camp and divided it, Ma said. He said those from traditional opposition parties such as the Democratic Party and Civic Party hope to stay, while a handful from the more-radicalized factions have vowed they will go.
The Hong Kong SAR government postponed the seventh-term LegCo general election for a year to minimize the risk of intensifying the coronavirus pandemic. The current sixth term of LegCo members ends on Wednesday. To avoid a legislative vacuum due to the election postponement, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in August extended the term of incumbent Hong Kong legislators for no less than a year.
If they (opposition lawmakers) stay, I hope they will do their job properly as legislators to monitor the government’s performance, particularly in the fight against COVID-19. Yet if they willfully filibuster and delay the progress of the meetings, they should be condemned.
Ma Fung-kwok, HK lawmaker
Ma said he believes most of the traditional opposition lawmakers will stay in office for the extended term. A LegCo seat provides lawmakers access to considerable influence and resources. But at the same time, the decision carries the risk of turning away some of their supporters who would have liked them to side with the hardened radical lawmakers and decline to serve the extended term.
The Democratic Party commissioned the pollster, which launched the poll on Monday. The result will be available within a week. More than a dozen opposition lawmakers, including Civic Party members, said they will follow the arrangement.
Originally, the proposed threshold required two-thirds of the respondents to vote for an option for it to be decisive. The Democratic Party later lowered the threshold to a simple majority. If more than half of respondents say the lawmakers should stay on, this bloc of opposition lawmakers will follow the will of the supporters and do so. Similarly, if more than half of respondents say they should leave, the lawmakers will boycott the council.
If neither choice garners a simple majority, the lawmakers will make “a political decision”, the opposition camp said. It did not elaborate.
“They not only move the goalposts but also put the ball right at the location they like,” Ma said of the opposition lawmakers, alluding to their willingness to give themselves the flexibility to use whatever poll results suits their narrative best and to justify their acceptance of the extended term in the end.
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"If they stay, I hope they will do their job properly as legislators to monitor the government’s performance, particularly in the fight against COVID-19,” Ma said. “Yet if they willfully filibuster and delay the progress of the meetings, they should be condemned.”
