A public campaign launched by multiple civil groups in Hong Kong to gather public support for the disqualification of four ineligible members of the Legislative Council had collected about 2.2 million signatures by the end of Sunday. The result came as no surprise because no sane person would sit on their hands and allow self-serving politicians to have their way at the expense of society.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress decision was made at the request of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government in response to strong public demand for the disqualification of four opposition politicians who had been denied candidacy for the seventh-term LegCo election — originally scheduled for Sept 6 but postponed till Sept 5, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — for failing to convince the returning officers they had sincerely upheld the Basic Law of the HKSAR and lived up to the oath of allegiance to the HKSAR of the People’s Republic of China.
These four lawmakers are not the first public officeholders to be disqualified; they may not be the last because some officeholders in other branches of the SAR’s governance establishment, including the judiciary and the executive, also sail under false colors. Like in any place ruled by law in the world, public officeholders who trade society’s well-being or national interests to advance their own political agendas have no place in the governance establishment, nor do those who prioritize their own political preference or ideological persuasions over their duty to serve the public.
The mass resignation, announced on Wednesday by 15 opposition members of LegCo in response to the NPCSC decision, is in essence an extension of the “burn together” strategy that the political fanatics in Hong Kong have been playing with abandon over recent years.
This tactic, which takes the well-being of Hong Kong society hostage for political ransom, first reared its ugly head before and during the “Occupy Central” movement in 2014. The political zealots in the opposition camp then doubled down on the dangerous political game during last year’s months-long anti-government campaign, dubbed the “black revolution”, which used the now-withdrawn extradition-law amendment bill as an excuse. Now they are staging a big show titled “resignation en masse”, which they see as “a weapon of last resort”.
The political stunt, which is aimed at triggering foreign interference, demonstrated the lack of wisdom and courage among the ranks of the opposition camp so that they still refuse to accept their biggest miscalculation. The popular support for the disqualification of the four ineligible lawmakers shows adversarial politics have no future in Hong Kong.
