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With Legislative Council elections now postponed, the question becomes whether the current body will have its term extended until the next polls. Photo: Nora Tam

Hong Kong elections: Extending Legco’s term would allow ‘caretaker legislature’ to stay in charge until polls are held next year

  • Opposition lawmakers will face dilemma over whether to stay if some colleagues are barred from interim legislature
  • Angered by British before 1997 handover, Beijing set up a provisional Legco that initially met in Shenzhen and passed more than 60 bills
Having postponed September’s Legislative Council elections, citing public health concerns, the Hong Kong government is now looking to Beijing to plug a legal gap.

The question is, what to do once the current Legco term expires on September 30?

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Friday it would be “most pragmatic” to extend the term of the current legislature by up to a year, but made clear she was leaving it to China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, to decide.

Hong Kong’s legislature has faced similar uncertainty before.

Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive, swears in members of a provisional Legislative Council in July 1997. Photo: SCMP

A decade before the city returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, London and Beijing agreed to a “through-train” arrangement under which members of the Legco elected in 1995, while the British were still in charge, would continue as members of the Special Administrative Region’s first legislature after the handover.

That plan was derailed by the last British governor, Chris Patten, who produced an electoral reform package for the 1995 polls, allowing 2.7 million voters to vote in nine new trade-based constituencies while continuing to vote in the geographical constituencies.

The plan angered Beijing, which said it breached the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, as well as the Sino-British agreements related to the handover.

Hong Kong asks China’s top legislative body to resolve legal problems with postponing elections

Beijing then decided that the Legco elected in 1995 would not continue beyond the handover. In March 1996, its handover Preparatory Committee announced that a provisional Legco would instead be established, with 60 members.

On December 21 that year, a 400-member committee elected 60 members, and Hong Kong’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, was elected the same day.

The provisional Legco met in neighbouring Shenzhen, with members having to travel there from Hong Kong on weekends.

After the handover in July 1997, it began meeting in Hong Kong at the former Legislative Council Building, which is now the Court of Final Appeal.

Hong Kong’s provisional Legislative Council meets for the final time in April 1998. Photo: SCMP

Between January 1997 and April 1998, the provisional legislature held 46 meetings, including 12 in Shenzhen, and passed 63 bills.

That “caretaker legislature” could provide an answer for Hong Kong this year, said Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, a semi-official think tank.

He said Hong Kong needed a full-fledged legislature to pass government proposals and bills on critical matters related to the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts to reboot the devastated economy.

“Extending the term of the current Legco could serve the purpose the provisional legislature did in 1997 to 1998,” he said.

However, that interim body was not without controversy.

Hong Kong elections: mass disqualification of opposition hopefuls sparks political storm

A major bone of contention was that it did more than necessary. Instead of dealing only with essential matters of government as originally envisaged, it behaved like a full-fledged legislature despite having no mandate from voters.

In July 1997, seven pieces of legislation passed by the pre-handover Legco, including a law on collective bargaining for workers, were suspended by the provisional legislature and later scrapped.

Pan-democrats, including the Democrat Party, which had 19 lawmakers elected in 1995, denounced the provisional legislature as undemocratic and boycotted its elections.

Four lawmakers from the Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL), a party that championed a middle-of-the-road strategy of “simultaneously negotiating with and confronting” Beijing, joined the provisional legislature.

Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said extending the current Legco until the next polls take place could serve the purpose the provisional legislature did in the late 1990s. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

The party’s chairman, Frederick Fung Kin-kee, and his deputy, Bruce Liu Sing-lee, were among the four, who came under fire from fellow democrats.

“We decided at the time to join the provisional legislature because we hoped to continue to fight for democracy and social justice within the new political establishment,” Liu said on Friday.

It is uncertain if incumbent lawmakers disqualified this week from contesting the next Legco elections will be allowed to remain in the legislature if its term is extended.

Academics and opposition politicians said incumbent moderate pan-democratic lawmakers now face the dilemma of whether to remain if some of their allies are kept out of the caretaker legislature for political reasons.

Hong Kong elections: opposition scrambles for support ahead of nominations deadline, a day after candidates barred from running

Liu said continuing in Legco might not be worth the political price they can expect to pay. “Those allowed to stay will come under fire from fellow democrats purged because of political reasons,” he said.

A pan-democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a need for opposition lawmakers to stay in the provisional legislature to prevent Beijing from turning the “one country, two systems” principle into “one country, one system”.

Ray Yep Kin-man, a political scientist at City University, agreed that pan-democrat lawmakers should stay if there is a provisional Legco.

“We can’t give up any form of resistance, even it is a token,” he said. “It will only push more people to the street as the electoral route is now blocked.”

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