“He who stabs and kills says ‘It was not I, but the weapon’ ” comes from the classic text Mencius — On the King of Liang, written over 2,000 years ago. In this work, Mencius argues that when a ruler’s inaction leads to the starvation of the people, claiming “the harvest was poor” to shirk responsibility is as absurd as a murderer blaming the weapon.

This contains profound political wisdom: First, those in power must diligently and properly fulfill their duties; second, for someone to kill and then blame the weapon is clearly absurd.

Regrettably, not every highly educated person understands this wisdom, including a Hong Kong professor with the surname of Chan.

Recently, the professor once again criticized the guilty verdict of the 14 defendants in the “35+ primary elections” case. He argued that in a democratic government, it is “common practice” for legislators to veto bills in exchange for concessions from the government in other areas. He also claimed that the Basic Law allows voters to reelect those who vetoed the government budget into the legislature, so those 14 defendants were just “acting according to current system design”. In other words, in Chan’s view, if the defendants are guilty, the fault lies in the system design. Such arguments are simply risible.

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The practice of legislators using their veto power to extract concessions from the government does exist in democratic governments, but this is a chronic illness of Western governments. Take the United States as an example — the repeated political battles and budget blockades between the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress have repeatedly led to government shutdowns, seriously harming the country and the people. Hong Kong has also suffered from “filibuster” tactics. During the “black-clad” violence, some “opposition” lawmakers abused procedures and power, paralyzing the Legislative Council through repeated questioning, endless quorum calls, and abuse of motions to adjourn, severely damaging public interests. The actions of those “filibustering politicians” are more abhorrent to society than the inaction of rulers described by Mencius, because the former not only refused to govern, but also obstructed the normal functioning of the government, causing greater harm to society. Yet the said professor actually sees this harmful dross as the essence of democracy, attempting to whitewash the 14 defendants’ actions. This is truly absurd to the extreme.

The original intent of the Basic Law’s provisions on budget vetoes was to resolve major conflicts between the executive and legislative branches and avoid a constitutional crisis

And shifting the responsibility to “system design” is a modern version of “he who stabs and kills says ‘It was not I, but the weapon’.” The 14 defendants were convicted not simply because they attempted to use the “system design” to veto the government budget. The original intent of the Basic Law’s provisions on budget vetoes was to resolve major conflicts between the executive and legislative branches and avoid a constitutional crisis. But these defendants participated in a plan to subvert State power by indiscriminatingly vetoing the government budget after taking control of the Legislative Council with the purpose of forcing the chief executive to dissolve the Legislative Council and then resign — thus causing a constitutional crisis. In other words, the illegal acts identified by the court were not the budget-veto mechanism itself, but the actions driven by an illegal intent, attempting to seriously interfere with, obstruct, and undermine the ability of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government organs to perform their duties in accordance with the law, undermine the “one country, two systems” policy, and subvert State power. Using an analogy, the behavior of those defendants was like using a surgical knife intended for saving lives to kill people. It is inevitably laughable to shift the blame to the surgical knife.

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Perhaps the professor should read more Chinese classical texts and less Western democracy theories, and stop using the dregs of Western politics to exculpate convicted offenders, and certainly not make absurd statements like “He who stabs and kills says ‘It was not I, but the weapon’.”

The author is a Hong Kong solicitor and vice-president of the Legal Profession Advancement Association.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.