Dropping A Bill Over Mass Action Not Good: Regina Ip

Executive councillor Regina Ip on Wednesday said the government should either have shelved its controversial extradition bill before public opposition built up against it last year, or it should have finished the job in pushing the legislation through Legco despite huge public protests.

Ip told a radio programme that she never supports the dropping of a legislation over mass protests as governments should not be seen as yielding to such actions.

She was speaking after Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday said both the government and lawmakers must ‘learn a lesson’ from the saga – on the one year anniversary of a massive march of an estimated one million people, that kicked off months of increasingly violent protests.

Ip said that in retrospect, she and other government advisers perhaps should have told the government to pull the bill months before it was formally withdrawn last October.

However, she stressed that this should have been done even before public opposition mounted against the legislation, as the government should not be seen to yield to mass protests.

"Due to the government's failure to counter the publicity launched by the opposition, a lot of fear had been stirred up. I never support withdrawing an important piece of legislation just because of mass mobilisation," she said.

“I think that would encourage more mass mobilisation and undermine the government's capacity to govern. So the lesson to learn is maybe we should have advised the chief executive much earlier than June 9 to withdraw the bill."

Ip resigned as Secretary for Security in 2003 after a failed attempt to enact national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law, that was shelved after mass protests.

She also told a radio programme that the controversial bill could have been passed last year despite the protests, if pro-establishment lawmakers had been better prepared and had stayed in the chamber overnight ahead of the vote.

“If [the government] pushes ahead, they should have ensured [that it passes.] You can’t pass the legislation even with 42 [pro-establishment lawmakers]?”

The Legco meeting on June 12, 2019 was ultimately cancelled as thousands of protesters surrounded the complex, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds.

Ip also said the government is in some degree responsible for Beijing’s decision to directly impose a national security law on Hong Kong, since it had failed to fulfil its constitutional duty to do this for 23 years after the handover in 1997.

She said there will be more room for "Two Systems" the sooner Hong Kong fulfills this duty.