Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says Beijing interference row distracts from the opposition’s shackling of Legislative Council

Liaison office and HKMAO ‘can certainly express their views when exercising their power of supervision’

She adds recent controversy over the agencies has drawn focus from pan-democrats’ filibustering antics

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Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, one of two bodies which criticised local legislators, creating the recent controversy. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:27pm, 21 Apr 2020Updated: 11:03pm, 21 Apr 2020

Hong Kong’s leader has urged the public to focus on how opposition lawmakers are paralysing the legislature rather than the ongoing row over the powers of Beijing’s offices supervising the city’s affairs, insisting she has clarified they have the right to comment and criticise.

Amid an intensifying row over the roles of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) and Beijing’s liaison office in the city, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Tuesday insisted that the two agencies’ recent broadsides against local legislators did not constitute interference.

She said the real issue was “malicious filibustering” by pan-democrats to stop bills progressing through the Legislative Council, which has been hamstrung by the failure to elect a House Committee chairman.

Lam also apologised for any confusion caused by her government’s conflicting statements on the matter last week.

Carrie Lam said the liaison office had not interfered with affairs that Hong Kong was meant to handle on its own. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

But she did not make clear whether the main clause in Article 22 of the city’s Basic Law – which guarantees non-interference by mainland China bodies – covers the two agencies, despite calls from legal groups and lawmakers for the government to state its position.