WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON, MR SOLICITOR-GENERAL?
Last Friday I attended a forum addressed by Solicitor-General Robert Allcock. He faced a group of very doubting lawyers, academics and legislators and was gentle but ineffective in his denials that there was anything to be concerned about in the proposals for Article 23.
I left with one question in mind: whose side was he on? Was he on the side of those who want to maintain freedom of civic expression to the maximum possible degree within the Basic Law? Or was he on the side of those who wish to restrict that freedom to the minimum possible level? I came away with the impression that he simply saw it as his job to side with the repression of such freedom to the maximum possible degree.
Maybe Mr Allcock's bosses do not understand, despite the deeply concerned warnings of the widest range of legal, religious, creative, educational and even some business opinion, that they are in the process of knocking out one of Hong Kong's key differentiations from mainland China, and key international strategic strengths. But Mr Allcock should.
Officials holding public authority have to decide where they stand. By their decisions they have guided societies, either towards openness and success - like the United States - accepting an element of dissent uncomfortable for those in power or authority; or towards rejection of dissent, narrowness of social vision and poverty - like the Soviet Union, the old People's Republic of China and all the failed dictatorships of the world.
The solicitor-general would do better to resign than to try and impose on Hong Kong a mainland attitude to freedom and information - that the minimum possible degree of freedom is the aim. After five years of post-handover peace, these changes are not needed.
Our public policy should be to introduce the minimum change required to comply with the Basic law, not to pursue the maximum repression the government reckons it can get away with.
PAUL SERFATY
Mid-Levels
