Legco Needs New Rules To Control Chaos: Paul Tse

The chairman of Legco's Committee on Rules of Procedure, Paul Tse, says legislators will be consulted over the summer on whether there should be a wider range of options to punish unruly behaviour in the council, including reprimands, fines and brief suspensions.

Tse said current rules are not tough enough to prevent chaotic scenes.

He said one idea is to allow legislators to vote on motions to punish colleagues for unruly behaviour, rather than leaving such decisions to the council's president.

"In that sense there will be a far better protection for those minority interests in parliament than at the moment, we just have to rely on the decision of one member, which is the president himself," Tse said on Monday.

He added that using motions to sanction lawmakers is the usual practice overseas.

Tse has previously suggested the idea of banning lawmakers who misbehave from the council for a whole year.

But Civic Party lawmaker Dennis Kwok said the pro-democracy camp opposes the idea of any "draconian penalties" for unruly behaviour in Legco, and he claimed the pro-establishment camp is simply taking advantage of their dominance in the council.

"There are no countries in the world, at least no democratic countries to speak of, that would suspend a member of parliament for up to one year with no end in sight. That is in my view, an alternative way to disqualify members. And I think that is fundamentally wrong and unnecessary," Kwok said.

Kwok added that his camp is willing to discuss ways to make Legco run more smoothly, but the current proposals are nothing but "a power grab by the pro-establishment [camp]."