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Hong Kong lawmakers primed for showdown over joint checkpoint plan as 60 of 64 Legco members sign up for key committee
Sixty of 64 Legco members sign up for pivotal bills committee that will review controversial plan allowing mainland officials to work locally at rail terminus
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Legislators across Hong Kong’s political spectrum were preparing for a showdown over a controversial joint checkpoint plan for a high-speed cross-border rail link, with almost all lawmakers vying for a seat on the bills committee that will start scrutinising the proposal on Monday.
Sixty lawmakers – 24 pan-democratic and 36 pro-establishment politicians – had signed up for the pivotal panel. Only four Legislative Council members did not follow suit, it was learned on Saturday.
The committee will hold its first meeting on Monday, and atop its agenda is the election of a chairman and vice-chairman.
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The Civic Party’s Tanya Chan, who also convenes a co-location concern group, said she would seek to be chairwoman. That would pit her against pro-establishment lawmakers Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan.
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“Both [Ip and Cheung] are Executive Council members, and they could be biased and force lawmakers to vote by a deadline set by the government,” the pan-democrat said, referring to their duties as advisers to the city’s leader, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. Chan added that unresolved legal questions about the plan could lead to a constitutional crisis.
Beijing’s top legislature last December endorsed the joint checkpoint arrangement, which would allow mainland immigration and customs officers to enforce national laws in a zone leased to them at West Kowloon station in Hong Kong. The link extends to the city of Guangzhou on the mainland.
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