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My Take | Attention pan-dems: don’t cut off your noses to spite your faces
The opposition camp’s threats to the education funding bill in their pique at the disqualification of some of their members will just end up hurting them at the ballot box
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Why you can trust SCMP
Alex Loin Toronto
Blind opposition and mindless theatrics have brought pan-democrats and localist radicals to a sorry state at the Legislative Council. They have lost the plot following the High Court’s shock judgment last week, which disqualified four of their own who had failed to swear their oaths of office properly.
In retaliation, they are threatening to scuttle an education funding bill worth HK$3.6 billion a year that practically everyone supports, including their own constituencies. Several clichés come to mind, such as biting the hand that feeds you, and cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Having forced the cancellation of two Finance Committee meetings at Legco already, the pan-dems have one more chance to approve the bill today before the summer recess. Yet, at the last minute, they are attaching new conditions and demands.
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These include expanding the scope of coverage of a new subsidy worth HK$30,000 a year, currently budgeted for secondary school graduates who enrol in private tertiary schools that run expensive self-financing degree programmes.
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I am all for extending the new subsidy to students who take self-financed courses at public universities. But this can be done in the next round of legislation.
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