Regina Ip Blasts Colleagues Over Abandoned Meeting

A meeting of the Legco committee scrutinising controversial legislation for the West Kowloon rail terminus was abandoned on Tuesday due to a lack of quorum, with chairwoman Regina Ip criticising members from both sides of the house for failing to turn up.

Ip said 27 lawmakers had promised to attend, but she was forced to suspend the meeting with only 20 present in the room, one short of the quorum.

Just minutes before the suspension, there had been enough lawmakers present. But pro-democracy councillors Tanya Chan, Claudia Mo and Leung Yiu-chung suddenly upped and left.

"We are short by one member today. Twenty-seven members promised to attend but many failed to show up, both on the pan-dem and pro-establishment camp," Ip said.

"I was particularly disappointed that there were three pan-dem members who were already present but stepped out of the room and declined to re-enter the room, knowing that we might have a quorum failure. That is particularly regrettable."

Ip warned she may make up for the lost time by scheduling more meetings and stopping what she called "repetitive questions".

Chan said their action was planned by the pan-democratic camp because they object to being asked to pass legislation to enable part of the station to be handed over to the mainland, a move they say will violate the Basic Law.

"I think this is the worst battle for the whole of Hong Kong ... there is no constitutional basis for having this co-location arrangement. So I don't think this is the right way to ask legislators to pass this bill."