Four democratically elected lawmakers have just been disqualified from their Legislative Council seats in a landmark court case, stripping the opposition camp of its veto power.
Pro-democracy legislators “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Nathan Law, Lau Siu-lai, and Edward Yiu, who netted a combined 185,727 votes between them during the September LegCo elections, have all been ousted from their seats following a judicial review filed by former Chief Executive CY Leung’s administration.
Leung and Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen filed the suits in December聽to remove the lawmakers from LegCo. The writs accused the lawmakers of failing to take their聽oaths of office in a “sincere and solemn” manner last October, as per an interpretation of the Basic Law delivered by Beijing in聽November.
High Court Judge Thomas Au said today in a written judgement that the Basic Law interpretation was “binding” and that “the word ‘solemn’聽bears the commonly understood meaning of being dignified and formal.”
Veteran lawmaker Long Hair called for universal suffrage underneath聽a yellow umbrella (the most iconic symbol of the Umbrella Movement) during his oath taking, and tore a scroll representing a controversial Communist Party ruling.
Former Umbrella Movement protest leader聽Nathan Law said during the swearing-in ceremony聽that he was being “forced” to take the oath by a “authoritarian regime”, 聽then briefly raised the intonation of the word 鈥渞epublic鈥 when saying聽the 鈥淧eople’s Republic of China鈥.
Edward Yiu, from the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape functional constituency, added a pledge to 鈥渇ight for universal suffrage and serve the city鈥檚 sustainable development鈥, while Lau Siu-lai took her oath in “slow motion” by pausing for聽six seconds between every word.
The quartet鈥檚 disqualification follows the highly publicized ousting of two localist lawmakers, Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching, whose oath-takings involved anti-China banners and usage of derogatory wartime slurs for China. While LegCo President Andrew Leung decided to allow the pair to retake their oaths, the controversy surrounding聽them led to聽chaos and eventually, Beijing’s interpretation.
