See the report below from the International Times. Although some members are standing up to be counted essentially it’s the first step in the Law Society becoming lackeys of Beijing and the Communist party. Another nail in the coffin of rule of law in Hong Kong . Expect a few more this year
A new Law Society report on how Hong Kong should elect its leader in the 2017 elections omitted criticism of Beijing, one member said Tuesday, adding that he was “embarrassed” by it. Members of the professional body had previously criticized mainland China’s framework of the city’s electoral system.
“We should be speaking out more and educating the public more … and it’s embarrassing that the Law Society isn’t,” said lawyer Mark Daly, a member of the committee that drafted the report, according to Reuters. He added that the 8,000-strong committee was becoming more like mainland China, “remaining silent on human rights issues and rule-of-law-issues.”
Daly said that members of the committee had criticized China’s National People’s Congress’ framework on Hong Kong’s 2017 chief executive elections as “regressive” and that the committee was disappointed by it. The negative comments were contained in an internal report that the society prepared last year to submit to the Hong Kong government on proposals for electoral reform, but were nowhere to be found in the final submission Friday; the last day for groups to submit their opinions.
Daly said that none of those comments from the earlier unanimous draft “had made it into the submission,” according to South China Morning Post.
Instead, the final report stressed the Law Society’s support for the NPC’s decision announced last August to vet candidates for the elections. It also confirmed that the NPC had “general and free-standing power” to interpret Hong Kong’s mini-constitution. The original draft was written to address the society’s concern with that decision as being “inconsistent with the ‘broadly representative’ principle enshrined in Article 45” of the Basic Law, said Daly, according to SCMP.
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