The Legislative Council will start today (Wednesday) the long-awaited debate on amending its Rules of Procedure. LegCo President Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen has announced that all proposals will be discussed in one combined debate and each legislator will be allotted 15 minutes to present their case.

It means the debates may take 30 hours, if things go as planned, and hopefully this piece of LegCo business will be concluded before Christmas-New Year holidays begin. Amending the Rules of Procedure is absolutely necessary and long overdue, because many members of the public have been demanding it for years.

Amending the Rules of Procedure has been a hot topic for years because wanton delays by opposition lawmakers with every conceivable means the current Rules of Procedure allow have made numerous local residents very angry. Growing public resentment toward rampant filibustering of government funding bills in particular, causing the loss of billions of dollars in taxpayers' money as infrastructure projects are delayed, prompted pro-establishment lawmakers to demand changes to the Rules of Procedure some years back; these have finally reached the starting line. Even Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has voiced support for this popular move.

Not surprisingly opposition parties have opposed this development all along and have been doing everything they can to delay it, including many nonsensical proposals of their own to prolong the debates as much as possible. Invoking some archaic clauses in the Rules of Procedure, like suggesting all reporters be evicted from the legislative chamber, is a recent tactic.

Filibustering is quite common in Western countries such as the United States and United Kingdom, where certain lawmakers' filibustering tactics were described as "legendary" for their creativity. Some people believe it is allowed because the minority deserves some consolation for being unable to block certain bills supported by the majority. In Hong Kong, however, it is much more than that, because very often the opposition camp uses it indiscriminately with no regard to how the public feel about it. Such politically motivated irrational behavior convinced many Hong Kong residents that those opposition politicians are beyond reasoning with and the only way to reduce, if not prevent, the damage caused by filibustering is to limit the length of delaying tactics by amending the Rules of Procedure.

One of the excuses used by opposition members of LegCo to reject Rules of Procedure amendment is that they have the right to speak. What they fail to acknowledge is that rights come with responsibilities, not to mention the fact they have no right to harm the public interest while exercising their individual rights. Besides, the proposed amendments do not completely prohibit filibustering, but rather limit the length of a lawmaker's speech each time. The same goes for nonsensical proposals designed to prolong deliberations. People expect lawmakers to serve the public interest to the best of their ability, not to abuse their powers, rights and privileges to satisfy personal wants.

(HK Edition 12/06/2017 page6)