The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the Express Rail Debate
Author: Mrs. Regina Ip (Member of Legislative Council, Chairperson of Savantas Policy Institute)
After every major campaign, typically the government would conduct a 「post-mortem」 to dissect what went wrong and what the government got right. Although the government has not exactly hit a home run in securing $66.9 billions from LegCo for the construction of the express rail, it is not hard to imagine that officials finally have some cause for celebration.
Who are the good, the bad and the ugly in the express rail debate? The usual suspects are the officials, the politicians, the demonstrators and Hong Kong's chattering class. As the battle was fought mostly in the chambers of LegCo until the final stages, the chief protagonists were the officials locked in battle in LegCo, namely the Secretary for Transport Eva Cheng and her team, the anti-express rail legislators, and, outside LegCo, the groups opposed to its construction. As usual, the Secretary was criticized for insufficient consultation, giving evasive answers to legislators' questions and lacking courage in facing up to protestors besieging LegCo. The fact is, seldom has any official much to gain from public polemics. In handling public consultation over potentially explosive subjects, the official in charge has to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of inadequate consultation and over-heroic engagement which risks sparking more protest. As a minister of a government with low approval ratings headed by an embattled chief, Eva Cheng had done as well as she could in mustering sufficient support within LegCo to ensure passage, avoiding gaffes which could stoke backlash, and striking the right public profile which combined firmness with tact and rationality.
In comparison, prior to the landmark voting and the protests which ensued, high-powered interventions by the most senior leaders of the government were conspicuous by their absence.
The politicians had their field day in public grandstanding in the course of a painfully prolonged, televised debates totaling 24.5 hours. Legislators from the League of Social Democrats pushed filibustering to the limits, while a greenhorn legislator, Paul Tse from the tourism sector, managed to snatch a few split seconds of limelight by joining the fight. Other legislators opposed to the project kicked up as much trouble as they could by revisiting such vexing issues as the location of the terminus, arrangements (or rather the lack thereof) for the Choi Yuen villagers to resume farming, and immigration clearance problems. But whether within or outside LegCo, the legislators and groups supporting Kam Sheung Road in Yuen Long as the alternative location for the terminus had failed to shed light on why the same problems of possible immigration delays, cost overruns and hardship caused by eviction and clearance could be avoided if the terminus were to be located in Yuen Long rather than West Kowloon.
As for the demonstrators, the protest against the express rail project soon became a proxy for the fight against obstruction of the 「will of the people」 by legislators elected in functional constituencies. Yet in their clamor for western-style democracy, few protestors bothered to pay attention to the principle of 「supremacy」 of the legislature manifested by laws against assaults, interference, obstruction or molestation of any legislator 「going to, being within or going from the precincts of the Chamber」. Technically speaking, all those who joined hands in blocking legislators from departing LegCo after the vote or pursued them with jeers and insults might have breached the law. As in any mass protest, respect for constitutional principles and balance between freedom of expression and the need for law and order were thrown out of the window.
In a way, legislators had not fared much better. The marathon debates threw up the lack of rules providing for 「cloture」 or guillotine procedures governing Finance Committee proceedings. Eventually, potentially unending, 「free」 expression by opposition legislators was broken after a tug-of-war between pro-rail and anti-rail forces within LegCo, with Emily Lau, the Finance Committee chairperson, sandwiched in between. The whole episode brought into sharp focus much that is unresolved and conflictual in Hong Kong people's quest for democracy.
As for the commentators, Executive Council convenor Mr. Leung Chun-ying outperformed himself as the government's critic-in-chief, again, by lambasting the government for inadequate compensation and compensation. Yet, as former US President Bill Clinton had said, 「Talk is cheap. It's the policy, stupid.」 It is not hard to surmise which side Mr. Leung is on, and who the winners and losers are in this saga.
