Letters | Hong Kong has a national security law: pan-democrats have no room to complain

Name: Hong Kong pro-establishment lawmaker elected committee chair after scuffles at Legislative Council
Uploaded: 2020-07-01T00:00:15.000Z
Duration: 3 min 4 s
Description: Hong Kong pro-establishment lawmaker elected committee chair after scuffles at Legislative Council

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Why you can trust SCMP

Pan-democrat lawmakers protest against a new national security law for Hong Kong, outside the central government’s liaison office in Sai Ying Pun on May 22. The law was unanimously passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on June 30. Photo: Felix Wong

Letters

Published: 8:00am, 1 Jul 2020Updated: 8:00am, 1 Jul 2020

Recently, there have been a lot of comments from the pan-democrats that the national security law designed for Hong Kong was being made in a black box without consultation.

The reason is that the city’s pan-democrats clearly don’t know how to play politics. The so-called art of politics is to “compromise” and “be water,” but they have ignored these principles. A political reform package was put forward in 2014 for the direct election of our chief executive. They said the proposed mechanism was not their cup of tea and totally rejected it.

Accepting the proposed changes to the election method would not have meant it could not be further improved and democratised in the future. I really don’t know what the pan-democrats have achieved politically up to now.

03:04

Hong Kong pro-establishment lawmaker elected committee chair after scuffles at Legislative Council

Legislation on Article 23 of the Basic Law has been stalled for 23 years, while the pan-democrats together with the hot-headed youngsters have ironically proved to be the staunchest followers of Mao Zedong, who once said, “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports” and emphasised “putting politics in command”.

Any formal consultation for the security law legislation would automatically be subjected to the pan-democrats’ filibustering.

It seems the pan-democrats have given the central government the perfect excuse: to use the social unrest to have the legislation passed in the blink of an eye. If the party is bad, the pan-democrats are far worse. They definitely need to reflect on their actions.

Ringo Yee, Tuen Mun