'Pan-dems Have To Pay For Crossing Red Line'

The Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Erick Tsang, said on Sunday that the more than 50 pan-democrats arrested last week on suspicion of subversion had to pay the price for "crossing the red line".

He told the state-owned China News Service that he had warned the pan-dems before they held their primary election that it could violate the National Security Law, but this "well-intentioned reminder" was ignored.

He said some lines could not be crossed and if they were, law enforcement and legal consequences would naturally follow.

Authorities arrested 53 people on Wednesday for alleged subversion, saying the primary vote last July – ahead of Legislative elections – was part of a plan to paralyse the government and force the chief executive to resign.

Article 52 of the Basic Law sets out how the chief executive must resign if he or she repeatedly fails to get a budget approved by the legislature.

Since the arrests, supporters and critics of the government have continued to argue over the move.

Executive councillor and lawmaker, Regina Ip, defended the arrests, saying no country would tolerate legislators vowing to force the government's leader out by voting down the budget.

She said during a TV interview on Sunday that lawmakers could still vote against government proposals, as long as they did not do so with the goal of paralysing the government.

Meanwhile, a local delegate to the mainland's top advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said the primary poll was illegal because the 600,000 people who came out to vote were in breach of the government's limit on public gatherings.

But Lawrence Ma, who's a barrister, told RTHK's City Forum on Sunday that there was no need to arrest those people because they were "incited" to vote.

Also speaking at City Forum, Alan Leong from the Civic Party said it was irrelevant to discuss whether voters had violated the public gathering ban as police had not brought this up.

Leong, who is also a barrister, stressed that even if the pan-democrats wanted to force the chief executive to step down, such a scenario was legal as it was stated in the Basic Law.

"It is not something known to our criminal law, that you can reach an illegal conclusion by committing a series of lawful acts, that's not possible," he said.