It’s not good to talk: Legco president Jasper Tsang puts brakes on pan-democrat filibuster with cap on debate hours

Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing has literally halted pan-democrats’ filibustering against the budget bill after putting a cap on the debate hours.

Tsang’s move, slammed as depriving legislators of their right to speak and the duty to scrutinise public finance, went largely unnoticed by the media on Wednesday as all attention was on the political reform blueprint, which was unveiled in the morning.

In the council meeting on the budget bill that followed the session on political reform, Tsang made the announcement.

“I received a letter from the financial secretary this morning. He says if the budget bill is not passed in time, many public services will be affected,” Tsang said.

Shortly before the president made that remark, Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah also told the council that the failure to pass the annual budget bill in June would mean there would be no funds to pay civil servants – which would have a wide range of social and economic consequences.

The president said he had decided to allocate a fixed amount of time to the eight debates on the different areas in the budget bill.

Assuming that scrutiny of the bill should be completed at the end of May, he said there would be about 100 hours left – provided that Legco would not add extra sessions for the debates.