Pan-dems Lose Bid For Andrew Leung Confidence Vote

Pro-establishment lawmakers on Friday blocked their rival’s bid to raise a motion of no confidence against Legco president Andrew Leung at next week's full council meeting, over the way he handled a government bill setting up a joint-immigration checkpoint at the express rail terminus.

The pro-democracy camp is unhappy that Leung capped the debate time, resulting in some legislators not being given the chance to speak.

The motion of no-confidence bid, put forward by Civic Party legislator Alvin Leung, was defeated by 35 votes to 25 in the House Committee.

The pan-dems' convenor, Charles Mok, said he was not surprised that pro-government lawmakers had sided with the president, but he said his camp would not let this issue die down.

Mok said he is hopeful that one of them will be allotted time for a debate on a non-binding motion against Leung before the summer recess.

"We will take full advantage of the debate time to air our grievances, our disagreement with the way that the president had been acting," he said.

DAB legislator Holden Chow, who voted against the move, said there was nothing wrong with the way Leung handled the West Kowloon Station debate.

"We spent dozens of hours in the bills committee on the bill and the opposition camp kept asking questions no matter what answers we gave them. They just ignored them because the goal was really to bring down the co-location bill. So the president has exercised his power, he cut short the filibustering properly," Chow said.