SEEN from across the border the Democratic Party's decision to withdraw its Legislative Council motion criticising the establishment of the Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) and the proposal to set up a provisional legislature is a stroke of good luck. The Democrats have deprived themselves of a useful propaganda platform and the Chinese side can portray the incident as a victory for their own efforts to stifle the debate.
However, instead of welcoming the Democratic Party's apparent good sense and self-restraint, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office Director Lu Ping has once again leapt to the offensive with a speech guaranteed to inflame passions even further. According to Chinese General Chamber of Commerce chairman Tsang Hin-chee, Mr Lu claimed it would have been unlawful for the Legislative Council to debate the legality of the establishment of the PWC. He argued that the PWC was set up by a decision of the National People's Congress (NPC) and could not be queried. As a regional legislature, he claimed, Legco had no right to challenge the NPC's decisions now and would have no right to do so after 1997.
It does appear that Mr Lu both overreacted and presented a rather distorted picture of what Legco does in fact have the power to do on these occasions. Motion debates may be full of sound and fury, but they are not a legal challenge to anyone's decisions. They serve to express, often in very forceful terms, the legislature's position on controversial policy matters. A government with an ear to public opinion and any claim to democratic principles would normally take the outcome of a motion debate very seriously. But - as the British administration here has frequently shown - they are not binding on any government. There is a great deal of difference between attempting a legal challenge to NPC decisions through legislative proceedings - which Legco is no more empowered to do than the Hong Kong courts are empowered to overturn NPC laws - and in registering displeasure and disapproval of those decisions in debate.
What Mr Lu has failed to understand, perhaps because the concepts of free speech and freedom to criticise the authorities are so alien to the Chinese Government, is that Legco has the right to criticise whatever and whomever it likes, provided it does not do so in any form which purports to be binding on the Chinese Government. Criticism of this sort may be profoundly offensive to Beijing. But it is not subversive or seditious. It is not interference in China's internal affairs. It is the exercise of the right to free speech enshrined in the Basic Law.
By the same token, it is pointless to suggest the decisions of the NPC are unquestionable. It may be that China considers all NPC decisions to be viable, as Mr Lu is quoted as saying. But in Hong Kong there is nothing wrong or illegal in criticising or arguing against them. If the criticism is unfounded, those with opposing views will be able to use the debate to point out where the critics have gone wrong. Ensuring balanced and informed debate is precisely what the freedom to discuss sensitive questions is all about.
