Opinion | How Hong Kong’s judiciary has allowed the Basic Law to be used in political games

To redress the situation of Hong Kong’s acute home shortage, the government has an ambitious plan: to reclaim at least 1,000 hectares of land east of Lantau for housing. The first step was to commission a feasibility study and, for this purpose, the government put before the Legislative Council a request for HK$550 million. This was approved on December 4, 2020.

On July 27 this year, Kwok Cheuk-kin took out a Form 86 under the Rules of the High Court, to apply for leave to start proceedings for a judicial review, naming Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor as the proposed respondent. The premise was that she made a funding request that was said to be against the principle of “keeping expenditure within the limits of revenue” under Article 107 of the Basic Law.

The application was considered by High Court Justice Russell Coleman on August 12 and, in a six-page determination, it was dismissed.

Although the applicant had sought to impeach Lam for her act of making the funding request on December 4, the Legislative Council in fact approved the request that same day. Yet the application for judicial review was not made until nearly eight months later. The proceedings were futile, and totally without merit.