White paper reflects existing constitutional arrangements
I refer to Alex Lo's column ("Is CY indoctrinated in mainland ways?", June 14). In it, he said that this government "has already been properly indoctrinated so its principal officers are on the same page as their mainland masters".
A section of the CSD paper, Mr Lo said, "reads suspiciously like a condensed version of part 5 of the white paper". He went on to say: "I had hoped that Leung and his officials could have the authority and integrity to serve as honest brokers between the pan-democrats and Beijing."
The lines that Mr Lo quoted from the CSD paper, such as "The HKSAR enjoys a high degree of autonomy but not absolute autonomy", have been well rehearsed and understood since the late 1980s when the Basic Law was being drafted. They are also constitutional arrangements by which the Hong Kong public expects both the SAR government and the central government to abide.
After the white paper was released, Professor Benny Tai, one of the three founders of the Occupy Central movement, took a stance quite different from other pan-democrats, and told the media that there was nothing substantively new in the white paper. The chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, agrees with Professor Tai on this point.
Mr Lo may be interested to note that Mr Leung and Professor Tai were colleagues nearly 30 years ago on the 180-strong Basic Law Consultative Committee. People who took part in or have followed the Basic Law drafting process would not be as surprised as Mr Lo appears to be in his column.
As to brokering between the pan-democrats and Beijing, the chief executive sees this as one of his responsibilities as head of the HKSAR. A few months ago, he initiated and helped organise the meetings in Shanghai between central government officials responsible for Hong Kong affairs and all Hong Kong legislators.