Hong Kong elections: Cheng Chung-tai becomes first opposition lawmaker to reveal he will serve out Legislative Council’s extended term
- Cheng challenges others in opposition to boycott Hong Kong’s entire electoral system if they refuse to join him in the legislature
- Beijing this week lengthened Legco’s sitting by at least a year after Hong Kong’s leader delayed next month’s elections over Covid-19 risks
Hong Kong activist Cheng Chung-tai has become the first opposition politician to reveal he will serve out an extended term as a lawmaker, after China’s top legislative body ruled that all incumbents would keep their seats until the city’s next elections.
Cheng, leader of localist party Civic Passion, also on Thursday challenged other opposition lawmakers to boycott future polls in their entirety if they refused to join him in the Legislative Council for the coming year.
His remarks came as Civic Party chairman Alan Leong Kah-kit said he personally felt the pan-democrats should stay on to defend against “any wrongs that the government has in mind”.
The National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) endorsed a resolution on Tuesday to extend the current Legco term by at least one year, plugging the gap created by the postponement of polls due to the Covid-19 crisis.
For the second day in a row, the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published on Thursday a front-page commentary hailing the resolution “a strong safeguard for Hong Kong to focus its energies in fighting the epidemic”.
But legal scholar Johannes Chan Man-mun, a former law dean at the University of Hong Kong, described the legal basis of the decision as “murky”. He suggested that rather than issuing a legal directive, authorities should have dealt with an unforeseen situation such as the pandemic through legislative amendments.