Legco has been wracked with filibustering which has stymied the progress of legislation, and the source of much of the logjam has been the controversial copyright bill.

At 12.20pm on Friday, the Legco meeting debating the bill was adjourned prematurely for the third time in about a month. It was the 65th attempt by pan-democrats to adjourn the meeting since Wednesday, with repeated efforts from the pro-government side to keep the meeting going.

Lawmakers will now meet again on Wednesday to resume the marathon debate, of which the end does not appear to be in sight.

READ MORE: Copyright bill debate abandoned as not enough members turn up to Legco

Pan-democrats have been making use of Legco’s quorum rule as their filibustering tool. Meetings have to be adjourned until the following week if fewer than 35 lawmakers are present in the chamber after a bell rings for 15 minutes.

The repeated quorum calls and the two previous adjournments were the main reasons behind the delay, six weeks after the bill was tabled in the legislature on December 9.

The pan-democrats strongly oppose the bill because they say the exemptions set out are insufficient to protect internet users, but Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Greg So Kam-leung echoes copyright owners in saying that the bill has struck the right balance, and he has refused to back down.

As the debate dragged on, the government’s No 2 official, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, said on January 21 that the administration “would not rule out” stalling the controversial bill.

Time is short for the government as lawmakers are scheduled to break for the Lunar New Year and Easter holidays in the next two months. Until the end of April, they will also be busy debating Leung’s policy address and Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah’s budget, to be announced on February 24.

Radical lawmakers have filibustered the budget bill in recent years, in a futile bid to force the government to give out cash handouts. Last year, the debate on the budget dragged on until the end of May, less than two months before the summer break.

With a tight schedule from May to July, and with no end in sight for the copyright bill, Lam warned that it was no longer one bill at stake, but at least 22 bills that lawmakers were supposed to vote on before their four-year term ends in the summer. Two more bills have been added to the list since then.

In a letter to Legco president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing on January 8, Lam said: “I am concerned that many of these important legislative proposals are unlikely to be passed by the end of this session.

“Should that happen, Legco would have to account for its actions to the community.”

Apart from the copyright bill, at least 23 other bills are waiting for a final vote in the council. That includes a bankruptcy amendment bill, which has been on the council’s agenda since December, 20 bills that were waiting to make it to the agenda and at least two bills that the government has yet to introduce.

According to Legco’s rules, bills that are not voted on by the time the council’s term expires lapse and work needs to start all over again in the next term.

In a letter to Legco house committee chairman Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen on January 14, Lam suggested that some of the bills in the logjam were “important to the city’s economic development”. These include the Financial Institution Bill and the Deposit Protection Scheme Bill, which seeks to make faster payouts to depositors in case a licensed bank closes.

There are also bills that are related to “livelihood matters”, such as the Property Management Services Bill and a bill on fixed penalties to combat shop front extensions.

But one of the most controversial laws on the list could be the private columbaria bill, as lawmakers had said that it would be difficult to tighten regulation of the fast-growing burial niche business without causing too much hardship for operators.

A medical registration bill is likely to court controversy as well, since it would allow the chief executive to appoint more than half of the Medical Council’s members. The Medical Association has threatened to go on strike if the government pushes ahead with the reform.

It might come as consolation for the government that the issue of retirement protection is unlikely to take up much of Legco’s meeting time, as a six-month public consultation only ends in June.

The recent turmoil has raised the question of whether Legco can get any business completed before the summer recess.

Labour Party lawmaker Cyd Ho Sau-lan, convenor of a weekly meeting of 22 pan-democratic lawmakers, suggested that to solve the logjam, a committee should be set up for further consultation before the copyright bill is tabled for a final vote. She said the proposal would allow lawmakers to debate and vote on the less controversial bills in the weekly council meetings.

“The pan-democrats don’t have the power to turn things around. All we can do is propose win-win solutions,” Ho told the Post.

READ MORE: Hong Kong copyright bill explained: Why are people so concerned about this?

Ho also believes that their effort in protecting people’s interest would be recognised.

On the other side of the political divide, Wong Kwok-hing, from the Beijing-loyalist Federation of Trade Unions has a gloomy view about the public impression of Legco.

“The public impression of Legco has worsened from considering it as doing nothing to being a ‘rubbish assembly’,” he said.

When asked if 35 of the 43 pro-Beijing lawmakers could stay in the chamber to make sure that quorums were met, Wong reiterated that it would be unfair for his camp to bear such responsibility on its own.

Wong hoped that the Legco president could think of ways to curb the marathon debate, but Tsang has yet to commit to any plan. He has only said that lawmakers “should have ample opportunities” to debate the bill, while the council should also “operate smoothly”.

Wong has suggested that HK$2.5 million is wasted on a day of filibustering or if a meeting is adjourned prematurely. Legco’s budget for 2015-16 was HK$758.6 million.

“That was without counting the money spent on officials. But I think nowadays the cost cannot be calculated that way because the entire government’s work is being slowed down,” Wong added.

Ho disagreed, suggesting that it was worth it if that was the cost of protecting the interests of seven million people.

However, Wong and Ho did agree on one thing: that it was unlikely that the pan-democrats would be “punished by voters in the September poll if they are too obstructionist” – as some pro-Beijing figures have warned.

Under the system adopted for Legco elections since 1998, parties or non-affiliated groups rank candidates on lists. Their chance of winning a seat is based on a “quota” obtained by dividing the number of valid votes cast in the constituency by the number of seats.

If a party gets enough votes to meet the quota, it automatically wins a seat. Whoever gets the remaining seats is determined by ranking the so-called remainder votes.

It means a candidate could win a seat by securing a small but fervent support base, even if it contradicts the majority view.

In an interview with the Post on January 18, Executive Council convenor Lam Woon-kwong suggested that the Legco filibustering highlighted the problem that “political parties need not take into account the majority public opinion”.

“The deadlock can’t be changed by the goodwill of any single party or politician, such as Emily Lau who has been calling for cross-party cooperation,” he said, referring to the Democratic Party chairwoman’s recent proposal that was met with a lukewarm response.

Lam also lamented that Legco had been suffering from fragmentation which was reinforced by functional constituencies, and the political stalemate was unlikely to be resolved until universal suffrage for all lawmakers could be achieved.

“But you can’t see when the light is going to come back on again ... I can’t see another cheque being presented to us again in the foreseeable future,” Lam said.

He was referring to Legco voting down in June last year the government package for electing the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017, which is a prerequisite for electing all lawmakers by “one man, one vote”.

But Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung said Legco’s election system was not the main reason behind the logjam.

“The problem is that the bill is so controversial that the public is not that negative about the pan-democrats’ filibustering ... Even the pro-establishment camp was aware of public opinion and knew that it might backfire if the government bulldozed the bill through,” Choy said.

Four years ago, lawmakers approved 16 bills and government motions on the last day of their term.

Wong said it was unclear whether the same thing would happen this year, Choy also said it was “not ideal” if lawmakers rush through bills at the eleventh hour.

But one fact is not up for debate: the clock is ticking.