The Basic Law will be changed by the back door if the Government persuades the NPC's Standing Committee to tackle the abode crisis by giving it a new interpretation, the Bar Association warned yesterday.
Association chairman Ronny Tong Ka-wah, SC, said the move appeared to breach mainland legal principles and would set a dangerous constitutional precedent.
'You cannot pretend to change an established law under the guise of interpretation. I believe what the Government is trying to do is precisely that,' Mr Tong said.
'Even under Chinese constitutional law, that may well be inappropriate.' A team of lawyers from the barristers' association has conducted urgent legal research on the legality of a reinterpretation by the Standing Committee.
Mr Tong said there was a weight of respected legal opinion among mainland experts that the Standing Committee did not have the power to reinterpret the Basic Law in the way the Government wanted.
The part of the Basic Law in question, Article 24, was in clear language. To give it a meaning which takes the right of abode off children born out of wedlock would amount to an amendment rather than a re-interpretation.
Mr Tong said only the full National People's Congress, which meets once a year, could take such a course.