By Jerome A. Cohen
This Xinhua release in today’s China Daily is, of course, of great interest, if only because of its silence about the NPCSC’s failure to mention whether the four democratic Legislative Council (LegCo) members who have been banned from re-election will be allowed to serve for the remaining one-year minimum of the existing LegCo term. The NPCSC’s silence on this issue means that the four will be permitted to continue for the extended year. This is the bone that Carrie Lam has thrown in an attempt to pacify the masses for the postponement of September’s election and the disqualification of the four from future service. Politically this may seem a shrewd move since the four cannot do much damage in the current LegCo, which remains under government control. As members of a popular majority in the next LegCo, they might have been a strong voice for democracy. Legally and logically, however, the decision seems inconsistent and a travesty exposing the real reasons for the disqualification.
Worthy of notice is the penultimate paragraph of the Xinhua story, which reports the full support given to the NPCSC’s newest decision by the “founding president of the Small and Medium Law Firms Association of Hong Kong”. This is an organization I have never heard of and may have been recently created. Perhaps its support is designed to counter the embarrassment caused by the failures of both the HK Bar Association and the HK Law Society to voice similar support.
In this connection it is useful to note another action of the NPCSC reported in today’s China Daily – the decision to allow HK and Macao lawyers to practice law in the nine major cities of Guangdong Province once they qualify like Mainland lawyers. This won’t make the local competition happy but gives an incentive to HK lawyers to support “the second Handover”.