Legal-sector candidates for Legislative Council election clash at radio forum

Two legal-sector candidates for the Legislative Council election exchanged fire yesterday over their alleged links with the mainland. Both insisted they were pro-democracy candidates.

The encounter between former Law Society president Albert Wong Kwai-huen and Civic Party barrister Dennis Kwok Wing-hang came on an RTHK radio forum after a caller asked Kwok about a Peking University study tour he attended in 2009.

Kwok answered that he attended the tour because he was recommended by a senior counsel from the Bar Association, and he believed it was important "to listen to different voices from different angles".

Wong, who is keen to dismiss his image as a pro-establishment candidate, said he had never been invited to take part in any mainland study tour.

"Attending a course about Chinese affairs is no big deal," he said. "I only wonder why you [Kwok] did not tell us in the first place."

He also questioned Kwok's integrity after Kwok reiterated that he did not know any officials from the central government liaison office in Hong Kong, while representatives of the office were involved in the Beijing tour.