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Opinion | Why Legco’s new-found ‘efficiency’ comes at a high price
- Pro-establishment lawmakers and the government are celebrating a new, more productive era as the legislative session draws to a close
- Claims of greater efficiency mean little, though, when the sources of discontent and distrust are as entrenched as ever
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The sixth Legislative Council has finally ended its extended term. There is no doubt that the remaining lawmakers, after all the disqualifications and resignations of the opposition, got to work in this final legislative year.
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They have passed 46 government bills, the most in a single year since the establishment of the special administrative region. And it was the first time since 2008 that the year ended with no lapsed bills.
The Legco term should have ended in the summer of 2020, but the election for the seventh term, originally meant to take place that September, got postponed. The pandemic was the cited as the reason for the interruption, but the unexpected year has still seen unprecedented political changes.
Less than two months after opposition lawmakers decided to stay on in the extended term, 15 quit en masse in response to the disqualification of four colleagues.
That set the stage for the “shining report card” that Starry Lee Wai-king, chair of the House Committee and head of Hong Kong’s largest political party, said the city’s legislature has delivered.
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Lee and her fellow lawmakers will celebrate Legco’s “efficiency”, but it is equally important to recognise that it came at a price. The disqualifications and resignations might have eliminated the chaos inside the chamber, but it is a far cry from what Lee hailed as “a new era of bringing order out of chaos”.
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