20 Hong Kong lawmakers may miss first meeting of Legislative Council’s new term due to birthday party fiasco
- Four lawmakers are in government quarantine after the ill-fated birthday party, while 16 who were later exempted have been asked to isolate at home
- Legco president Andrew Leung notes he cannot make the lawmakers skip the event, but urged them to use their ‘political wisdom’
Twenty members of Hong Kong’s legislature appear set to miss the first meeting of its new term after the body’s president asked them to stay home until they returned three more negative coronavirus tests following a potential brush with the coronavirus at a recent birthday party.
All 214 attendees were initially ordered to serve 21 days of quarantine at the government’s Penny’s Bay facility, though some, including 11 officials, were later released after a separate suspected case detected at the party was declared a false positive.
However, the 11 officials will still be required to self-isolate at home for nearly two weeks – using their own leave in the process – and test negative three times, with Legislative Council president Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen calling for lawmakers to take similar measures on Monday.
“For the sake of containing the pandemic, I will also strongly recommend the lawmakers who had their quarantine order similarly lifted to take reasonable anti-epidemic measures by staying at home [until they test negative three times],” he said.
Four lawmakers who were at the party beyond 9.30pm, when the infected guests arrived – Benson Luk Hon-man, Wendy Hong Wen, Duncan Chiu and Rock Chen Chung-nin – are still in government quarantine, while the remaining 16 were released alongside the 11 officials.
All attendees of the party are still required to undergo three more rounds of testing – on Monday, January 15 and January 22 – meaning all 20 lawmakers who were there are likely to miss the first meeting of the new Legco term on Wednesday, which Leung said he was still inclined to hold as scheduled.
“They can watch the online broadcast on Wednesday. I think that’s what they can do,” Leung said.
He insisted that it was up to legislators to decide for themselves whether to heed his appeal to stay home based on their “political wisdom”.
“All lawmakers are monitored by Hong Kong residents and they should be held accountable for their own behaviour. I hope – and believe – they will fully cooperate with the government’s anti-epidemic effort,” he said.
Beijing calls for ‘swift action’ against officials at birthday party
While the previous Legco term moved some meetings online at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Leung said it did not allow for a “hybrid” model in which some members attended in person and others online.
New People’s Party lawmaker Judy Chan Kapui said she and two colleagues who attended the party – Eunice Yung Hoi-yan and Lai Tung-kwok – had decided to skip the Legco meeting following an internal discussion.
“We believe we are of low risk but we do not want to ignore the ‘strong recommendation’ made by the president,” Chan said.
Three lawmakers from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, alongside at least five others, also said they would watch the live broadcast instead.
Separately, Starry Lee Wai-king and Chan Kin-por were returned uncontested as the new chairwoman and chairman of Legco’s House Committee and Finance Committee respectively. The pair served the same roles in the last term.
Earlier, Leung, the incumbent president of the legislature, was also re-elected to the post in the first one-man race for the body’s top position since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Additional reporting by Tony Cheung
