Filibustering must stop

A frustrated Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying asked all Hong Kong residents on Wednesday to help enlighten filibustering lawmakers to the fact that what they are doing will have political and economic consequences for Hong Kong as well as for themselves. As the CE noted, only one of the 72 projects, worth HK$67.5 billion, presented to LegCo since the beginning of this legislative year has been passed. Any right-minded person can see how ridiculous the situation has become. 

Equally anxious was Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, who visited Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang Yok-sing on the same day to talk about how to speed up the legislative process for the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2014. Tsang, himself, also discussed ways out of the current impasse with both pro-establishment and opposition lawmakers. 

All parties involved in the legislation exercise have been actively looking for an answer to the issue in recent days, except the opposition lawmakers, who make good use of the quorum bell, and who therefore hold the key to the solution. 

The copyright bill is very significant as it is intended to better protect intellectual property rights in the SAR. Blocking it will deal a serious blow to the government's attempt to enhance Hong Kong's competitiveness, not to say delay all ensuing bills related to other urgent economic and livelihood issues. The appropriation and legislative bills which cannot be dealt with within this legislative year will have to restart from scratch when LegCo resumes in October. A vast amount of time and money will be wasted. 

It is estimated that one day wasted in LegCo costs more than HK$2 million in terms of salaries of legislators and the LegCo staff, while monetary losses caused by delays in infrastructure projects are astronomical. 

When blamed for delaying livelihood-related bills at the same time, the opposition keeps saying the government could reschedule the various bills and let LegCo discuss the other bills first. But LegCo's role is only to vet the bills and not to decide for the executive branch what the priorities of the bills are. Only the government has the power to decide which bills should come before the others.
 
Those lawmakers, who have accused the executive of intervening in legislative affairs, are now trying to intervene in the executive powers themselves, attempting to dictate to the government which bills they can present to the legislature and what they cannot. So who is not upholding the principle of separation of powers now?