Travel industry chief considering surrendering Canadian document A prospective Legislative Council candidate from the Liberal Party is considering giving up his foreign passport, amid controversy over political appointees with overseas citizenship. Lawmakers hold diverse views on the issue. Some regard renouncements of foreign citizenship as a sign of commitment, while others say it is up to the voters to decide if candidates holding foreign passports are worthy of their support. Twelve Legco functional constituency seats - including the tourism, commercial, accountancy and legal sectors - can be held by lawmakers with right of abode overseas. This month, 51 per cent of 1,000 respondents to an SCMP/TNS survey agreed that the Basic Law provision allowing the 12 legislators to hold foreign citizenship should be tightened, compared with 36 per cent who disagreed. Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong executive director Joseph Tung Yiu-chung, who is set to contest the tourism sector functional constituency in September's Legislative Council election, said he was considering giving up his Canadian passport, which he had held for more than 10 years. 'I got a Canadian passport because my family used to live in Canada, and I thought it would bring me convenience as I had to travel frequently for my work in tourism. Before the handover, I was not sure how many countries would recognise the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport,' he said. 'But now it's evident that the HKSAR passport is widely recognised and I no longer need my Canadian passport.' Mr Tung said he had the idea of giving up his foreign passport long before the row over citizenship of government undersecretaries and political assistants erupted, and denied it was related to his possible Legco candidacy. He also said he had not discussed the issue of his passport with his party. Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, Civic Party lawmaker for the legal sector who holds a British passport, said: 'Undersecretaries and political assistants are appointed by the government, while lawmakers are chosen by voters through election. There is no connection between the two issues.' She said lawmakers' possession of foreign citizenship was allowed under the Basic Law, adding that it should be left up to voters to decide whether to support those candidates. The chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, Tam Yiu-chung, said renouncing foreign citizenship might appear as a good sign for voters, even though it was allowed from a legal perspective. A likely rival of Mr Tung, the Civic Party's Paul Zimmerman, said he had never thought of giving up his Dutch passport, and would not do so. Originally from The Netherlands and a Hong Kong resident for 25 years, Mr Zimmerman said he believed candidates' citizenship would not be a problem. Independent Paul Tse Wai-chun, who is also eyeing the tourism sector seat, said he gave up right of abode in Britain when he ran for a Hong Kong Island seat in 2000, as geographical constituency candidates were not allowed to possess foreign citizenship. The vice-chairman of the Civic Party, Albert Lai Kwong-tak, who is considering running in the engineering sector in September's election, declined to confirm if he had foreign citizenship.
