The Hong Kong police accused the democratic camp of subverting state power by holding the Legislative Council primary election last July, and arrested 53 people, not to mention other things, first of all, it is a blatant violation of the Basic Law.
The police believe that the 53 criminals’ main basis for the National Security Law is that they intended to force Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to resign through the primary election and even the suspension of the SAR Government, which also violates Article 22(3) of the National Security Law of Hong Kong, that is, to organize, plan, commit or participate in the commission of acts by force, threat of force or other unlawful means with the intention of seriously interfering with, obstructing or disrupting the performance of the functions of the Central Authorities or SAR organs of power in accordance with the law.
If the police did not say anything false, would they not at the same time declare that Articles 50 to 53 of the Basic Law are no longer valid? Article 50 of the Law provides that if the Legislative Council rejects the government budget, the Chief Executive may dissolve the Legislative Council and, pending the election of a new Legislative Council, may obtain temporary short-term appropriations in accordance with Article 51, based on the government expenditure of the previous year, and the government will not be suspended.
According to Article 52 of the Basic Law, the Chief Executive must resign if the Legislative Council continues to refuse to pass the budget after re-election. However, under Article 53, a new Chief Executive must be elected within six months, during which time the Chief Secretary for Administration, the Financial Secretary, or the Secretary for Justice will temporarily act in his or her place. In other words, the SAR may not have Lam as the Chief Executive, but the Chief Executive will not be absent for a minute, and the government will not come to a halt. The Basic Law has already guaranteed this, so why should the police believe that the SAR government will be suspended one day?
The police may not be able to say what they mean, or they may not know that the government will not be suspended. What they mean is that forcing the Chief Executive to step down is also a serious interference or obstruction of the SAR government’s administration, and therefore still violates the National Security Law. However, the Legislative Council’s repeated rejection of the government’s budget, one of the three circumstances under which the Chief Executive must resign, has long been enshrined in Article 52 of the Basic Law, and acting in accordance with the Basic Law is certainly a legitimate means. Why did the police see that the legal means became illegal, and those who intended to veto the budget became suspects of the National Security Law? Is it that the relevant provisions of the Basic Law are no longer valid?
The police seem to be saying that it is okay for legislators to veto the budget, as long as the purpose is not to demand the stepping down of Lam Cheng or the suspension of the government, then it is not a violation of the National Security Law. As mentioned above, the government shutdown is a fake issue and the police do not need to be a mediocre one, while if it is said that Lam Cheng was forced to step down, then whether the purpose of vetoing the budget is to ask Lam Cheng to step down or for other reasons, the result is not different, both are that the Chief Executive was removed and re-elected within six months according to the law, during which he will be acted by a Secretary of Department. Why is it that for the former, the police equate the Chief Executive with the entire government and equate the removal of the Chief Executive with subversion of the government, while the latter is a lawful act acting in accordance with Article 52 of the Basic Law and is fully permissible?
Equally inexplicable is the police’s law enforcement deployment and judgment. The Legislative Council primary election has been in the making for a long time and has been regularly followed by the media, with the election being held in public. If there is a risk of subverting the government, and the authorities could not be unconcerned, why did the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs only give a warm reminder before the primary election, advising people to be careful to avoid falling into the net of justice, but did not strictly prohibit it, let alone take action, and let the crime happen on the scheduled date? Is this how the police are used to dealing with the crimes they have identified?
In fact, the authorities did not stop the primary election, the main difficulty is that the participants in the primary election can not reach a consensus, so it is difficult to criminalize. As early as a month before the primary election, the organizing organization had already made it clear that it would not ask the successful candidate to “veto the budget after being elected”, and even the common platform would not include the “five major demands, none of which is indispensable”. At this point, the “10-step plan” proposed by Dai Yaoting last April was aborted in disguise, and participants were not required to agree with the above-mentioned ideas, let alone any common action plan. Therefore, even according to the police’s incrimination criteria, the purpose of the primary election is not to form an alliance to coerce Lin Zheng to step down, and the charge has lost its basic factual basis.
A plan to follow the rules of the Basic Law and use parliamentary means to ask Lam to respond to the five major demands of the people, or else resign and step down, ended up in a half-hearted failure, and even attracted the pursuit of the state security authorities, which was unexpected. What is breathtaking is that the law enforcers are blackmailing the opposition camp to conspire to rebel, making the primary election voting a story of subversion, while turning Lam into the entire regime, even according to the Basic Law can not remove her, and hiding the constitutional guarantee that the government will not stop, in order to strengthen the regime’s sense of crisis, and even the persuasive power of the arrest operation.
In the press conference before leaving office, the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal, Mr. Geoffrey Ma, insisted that Hong Kong still has the rule of law, but yesterday (6) no longer respond to the same questions, is it unintelligible or unspoken?
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