Enough of vulgar and violent behaviour, it’s time to disband Hong Kong’s legislature

Have you ever seen a bigger bunch of drama queens than Hong Kong’s lawmakers?

They’ve become completely devoid of shame these days, but I feel embarrassed on their behalf after watching our elected representatives misbehave in the Legislative Council chamber.

The chaos we saw last weekend was the pits, an absolute low point, as opposition politicians battled their pro-establishment rivals for control of the bills committee that should scrutinise the government’s highly controversial amendment to Hong Kong’s extradition law.

After watching the fracas first on television, I went through all the video clips posted online for good measure and must say it was categorically cringe-inducing. How simultaneously appalling and saddening to bear witness as the purported luminaries of politics in this city go off the rails, yelling, screaming, shoving and even physically assaulting each other for all the world to see.

Real classy conduct, for example, from the likes of pro-democracy champions Raymond Chan Chi-chuen and Eddie Chu Hoi-dick. They kept climbing on top of desks and launching themselves into the scrum, apparently to grab the microphone from a frazzled Abraham Razack, while a band of self-appointed bodyguards from the pro-establishment camp pushed and fought back to “protect” their pick for chairing the bills committee.

At one stage, 73-year-old Razack himself looked like a beached-whale version of Jon Snow emerging out of a pile of bodies to gasp for air in the “Battle of the Bastards” from Game of Thrones. There were so many elderly and unhealthy-looking lawmakers in that morass of melodrama, I’m surprised nobody suffered a heart attack or stroke.

It was like watching bad crowd-surfing at a lame rock concert when NeoDemocrat Gary Fan Kwok-wai attempted a swan dive and the mosh pit parted to let him crash to the ground, like Jack Black in School of Rock, and lie there in a crumpled heap.

Fan had to be stretchered out of the chamber to hospital and he later filed assault charges against Steven Ho Chun-yin and Holden Chow Ho-ding from the Beijing-loyalist bloc. I have to say I’ve seen more serious mosquito bites than the “injuries” that Fan and some others displayed for the cameras.

The ladies of the legislature behaved no better, setting a shining example for primary school kids in the art of pettiness and petulance.

During one most unladylike confrontation, veteran Democrat Helena Wong Pik-wan could be seen slamming chairs against rivals Elizabeth Quat and Ann Chiang Lai-wan, all remaining seated the whole time, as they jostled for a place at the panel. When Quat fell off her chair, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sheer ludicrousness of it all.

And while we’re on that subject, is there a more aggravating sound in this city, possibly even the entire country, than an unhinged Ann Chiang in all her shrill glory? It’s like listening to finger nails being raked across a chalk dust-covered blackboard.

Seriously, what is this city going to do about the loss of decency and dignity in local politics? It’s bad enough that many of our lawmakers treat Legco as a part-time job, but this descent into ghetto brawls and cat fights in the chamber is unacceptable.

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Hong Kong has never had a legislature that so richly deserves to be disbanded, but hang on, that’s going to happen anyway and we’re getting a chance to kick the Neanderthals out once and for all when we go to the polls next September.

If we end up re-electing this same bevy of bozos, then we have only ourselves to blame.

Unless we find a new generation of worthier and better-behaved politicians to represent us, we’ll be back on track with the rapid devolution of this species into knuckle-dragging primates flinging their own droppings at each other in the chamber.

Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post