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Leave politics out of the judicial system

I am glad that the dissidents have temporarily ceased their unlicensed radio broadcasts: contempt of the current legislation on radio licensing is one thing; contempt for the legal system is something else entirely. Sadly, the public has been so inundated with commentary and discussions on the former issue that many have missed the crux of the matter: do we still want to respect the rule of law?

If a radio licence application is rejected, there is always a channel for appeal. If the laws and regulations for radio licensing are outdated, there is a mechanism for amendment and, if needed, repeal. Currently, the appeal and amendments mechanism still works well, so there is no desperate need for any radical action outside the system.

Like a previous case involving wire-tapping, the temporary injunction applied by the government serves as a stop-gap measure to prevent a legal vacuum during the period when the appeal is being heard. This is a perfectly legitimate reason for the application of a temporary injunction. I do not see why anybody cannot wait three more months for the court to decide. If everybody took the law into their own hands, glorifying such action as civil disobedience, then the rule of law would be destroyed, leaving us with only anarchy and social chaos.

Now that rationality and common sense are prevailing again, we can take a closer look at the situation. When politics is in transition, the authority of the establishment is invariably eroded. People usually look to the court for arbitration and social justice, and this leads to the politicisation of the judicial system. While disinterested judges can arbitrate between different interest groups according to the established laws and regulations, they are also at a loss when these interest groups are jostling to change the rules of the game. This has to be resolved through a political process, not a judicial one.

This is exactly the situation here. Since the handover, Hong Kong has been a special administrative region of China with a high degree of autonomy, and no longer a British colony. People have completely different expectations of how the SAR should be governed. These expectations can clash with one another, and with the existing rules of the game. Therefore, the resolution of these conflicts should come about through a political process, not through the courts.

In the beginning of such transitions, judges are only too happy to expand their power and hand down verdicts on whatever comes up. Very soon, they find that they are vastly overloaded, and that they are drawn into the centre of political debates and struggles. Frequent questions are raised on the rulings of the court and the sentences imposed well after the cases have been disposed of by the court. In the end, the judges lose their impartiality in the eyes of the public, and the whole judicial system, as well as the community at large, are victims.

Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang is well aware of this pitfall and spoke against the politicisation of the judicial system last year. Let us leave what belongs to politics to the political process, and what belongs to law to the court. But his concern seems to have fallen on deaf ears, especially among dissidents. They have acquired the habit of applying for judicial reviews for almost everything. Such cases have increased at an alarming rate in recent years, and there is no sign of them abating.

It is quite amazing how much trust our so-called pan-democrats seem to have placed in a bunch of mostly middle-aged expatriates not popularly elected, and with no fixed terms of office.

If our dissidents so respect the judicial system and the judgment of judges, it is again quite unbelievable that they should challenge the system through civil disobedience. What do these people believe in? What exactly do they want? The only logical answer is that they are dissidents, whose ultimate aim is to discredit and destroy the system.

Lau Nai-keung is a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference delegate

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