Political reasons should not become a factor in assessing legal aid applications even after the handover, the outgoing Director of Legal Aid, Lady Cheung Cheng Po-lin, said yesterday.
She agreed that politically sensitive groups such as the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China should not be discriminated against. There have been fears that the alliance, branded subversive by Beijing, will be disbanded after 1997.
On the eve of her retirement, Lady Cheung said she believed the post-1997 chief executive would not meddle with legal aid decisions 'because the Chinese side has promised Hong Kong will remain unchanged for 50 years after the handover'.
China had even set up the first legal aid centre in Guangzhou, she said. This showed they had begun to accept the concept of granting legal aid to defendants.
Her successor is Chan Shu-ying who was the deputy Crown solicitor of the Legal Department.
