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If this had been a news story, Chim Pui-chung would have grabbed the headline.

  It was he who called for US Senator Jesse Helms to be barred from entering Hong Kong.

  If the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could call for members of the provisional legislature to be banned from entering America, said Mr Chim in his usual forthright manner, he and his cohorts should be banned in return.

  'Hong Kong has to be strong,' he thundered.

  We didn't have time last night to get on our hotline to Senator Helms and ask for his reaction. But we have a feeling it might have been along the lines of 'Chim Pui-who? '   If this had been a news story, David Chu would have grabbed a subsidiary headline for actually making a speech in Chinese.

  But then, if this had been a news story, Mr and Mrs Wong would hardly have got a mention at all.

  Andrew Wong, Legislative Council President, did not do anything newsworthy - like resign from the presidency just because his impartiality might be called into question by his membership of the provisional legislature.

  Elizabeth Wong (no relation, despite jocular attempts by both Mr Chu and Lee Cheuk-yan to present them as a warring couple on the brink of divorce) surprised only by the ineptness of her motion.

  It would have been news if she had persuaded legislators to vote in favour of her motion, which did not quite call on Mr Wong to resign.

  But with a majority of Legco members now also card-carrying members of the Provisionals, she was doomed from the beginning to lose the day.

  If Mr Wong did not either drink hemlock or resign, she wanted the Government to ask the courts to declare he had 'conflicts of interest when required to adjudicate on issues relating to the provisional legislature of which he is a member'.

  That was enough to alienate even some of her natural allies, as well as providing her opponents a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon her.

  'What?' they cried, one after another. Was she asking the Government and the courts to interfere in the internal affairs of the House? Wasn't she undermining the right of the legislature to regulate its own affairs?   The odd thing was, Mrs Wong was clearly aware they might think this way, because at the end of the debate she revealed she had asked for legal advice on the matter.

  Eminent lawyers, she revealed, had assured her the courts could indeed be asked to make a declaration - which the President could ignore without being in contempt - without interfering in the rights of the legislature.

  But by then it was too late. Minds were made up. Besides the vote was not on Mrs Wong's motion at all. It was on the wrecking motion by Mr Chu, which basically said the President's simultaneous membership of both legislatures would do wonders for 'continuity'.

  He won, of course.



Wongs huff and puff but houses still standing