James To Elected Extradition Panel Chair: Pan-dems

Hong Kong's legislature appeared to have entered a parallel universe on Monday afternoon, after the pro-government side announced that a meeting of a panel to vet extradition law changes was postponed, but the opposition later held a session anyway and elected a chairman.

On a day which saw both sides challenging the legitimacy of their rivals' claims about bills committee procedures, Legco's administrative wing removed the scheduled meeting from the list of events for the day after pro-government legislator Abraham Shek declared that it had been postponed.

But pan-democratic lawmakers went ahead regardless, even though all of their pro-Beijing rivals were absent.

The pan-dems rigged up their own sound system to make up for the lack of technical support, with Neo-Democrat Gary Fan doubling up as a cameraman, as they voted in James To to be the chairman of the bills committee.

The Democratic Party legislator had been leading the committee's meetings as the council's most senior councillor, even though Legco president Andrew Leung earlier backed Shek's claim that he has now replaced To.

The switch, arranged by the Legco secretariat, came after the move was proposed by the House Committee over the weekend. Shek promptly announced that Monday's meeting had been moved to Saturday.

Undeterred, the pro-democracy camp met as planned and the discussions certainly had all the trappings of a Legco meeting, even complete with a protest that threatened to derail the proceedings.

The sole troublemaker was the pro-establishment camp's Eunice Yung, who suddenly burst into the conference room, shouting slogans and holding up a sign that read "This is not an official meeting".

Yung, from the New People's Party, marched to the front of the room and stood in front of To, taunting the pan-dems that there were no security guards present to remove her.

After some shouting between Yung and her rival councillors, she eventually left the room, allowing the pan-dems to vote in To, and the Civic Party's Dennis Kwok as the panel's deputy chair. Both positions were uncontested.

As all this was going on, members of the pro-establishment camp held a media briefing near the conference room to declare the pan-dems' meeting illegitimate.

They are expected to vote in Paul Tse as the committee's chairman at the meeting at 9am on Saturday morning.

To, meanwhile, also ordered a committee meeting for exactly the same time, setting the stage for the next big Legco clash over the highly controversial extradition law changes.

Legco Secretary General Kenneth Chen said it was deeply regrettable that some lawmakers kept criticising the secretariat, insisting his team has been working impartially. He declined to comment on what happened at the bills committee, citing a legal letter from the pan-democratic camp.

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