Key Legco body delays vote on membership

A crucial Legislative Council subcommittee yesterday failed for the second time to vote on whether to accept late applications for membership from 12 pro-establishment lawmakers.

The pan-democrats seized the majority on the public works subcommittee at the start of the legislative year in October, with 26 of the camp's 27 lawmakers signing up for membership just before the deadline. Their pro-establishment rivals, of whom 20 joined the committee before the deadline, accused them of ignoring an unwritten rule that the sides would coordinate committee memberships and chairs.

The committee vets government funding requests before they go to the Finance Committee and is key to the pan-democrats' strategy of blocking government funding requests to press their case against Beijing's restrictive framework for the 2017 chief executive election.

A special meeting on the late applications yesterday was dominated by procedural matters, with only the last 10 minutes of the two-hour session spent discussing the first application, from Kowloon East lawmaker Paul Tse Wai-chun.

Sin Chung-kai of the Democratic Party and the Civic Party's Kwok Ka-ki spoke in favour of Tse's application, saying the independent legislator was honest in his explanation. Tse had told an earlier special meeting that he wanted to join the subcommittee because "the situation had changed".

Many of the other pro-establishment lawmakers blamed their assistants for missing the deadline.