Ex-Hong Kong delegate to NPC, Ng Hon-mun, criticises presidium elections

A former Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress has criticised the selection process for the group that oversees the election of local delegates to the national legislature.

He has called it a "black box" arrangement more at home on the mainland.

Ng Hon-mun, who served as a local delegate for 33 years from 1975, described the process for choosing members for the presidium as a "black box operation" that used a "mainland-style election model" in comments made to the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao yesterday.

Earlier this month, in a regular column for another Chinese-language newspaper, Ng criticised some NPC members of doing little. "Some NPC members do a lot of moonlighting [in other roles]; how can they fulfil their role as a representative of Hong Kong people?"

Ng said he hoped to see capable people elected who expressed the concerns of the city and its residents in the NPC.

Professor Priscilla Lau Pui-king, an NPC member, said the 19 members of the presidium were prominent and respectable people, and only the method of selecting them was different from what was commonly used in Hong Kong.