HONG KONG - Legislative Council Finance Committee Chairman Chan Kin-por on Thursday said he was drafting new measures to cut filibusters in meetings, as the committee took on average 4.2 hours to approve one item in the 2016-17 legislative year, double the time in the previous year.
Briefing the media on the committee’s work for the year at the end-of-session press conference, Chan proposed amendments to the committee’s procedures. This includes allowing each lawmaker to table only one motion during each item deliberation, and banning lawmakers from raising more than one adjournment motion in meetings.
Chan said he believed the amendments would effectively enhance the Finance Committee’s efficiency as some 30 percent of meeting time would be spared. This would give lawmakers more time for discussing items on the agenda.
Among the 64 meetings deliberating government funding requests held in 2016-17, the committee spent 10 percent of its time – 12 hours – to handle motions tabled by lawmakers, up from 7.3 percent in the previous year, Chan said.
Lawmakers also raised motions to around 60 percent of the 29 items deliberated in committee meetings. In the previous year, lawmakers tabled motions to only 20 percent of the agenda items, Chan said.
Paragraph 37A of the Finance Committee Procedure stipulates that a member is able to move a motion to express a view on the agenda item without notice during deliberations on the item.
Chan said such permission was “an effective filibuster tool” and some lawmakers abused it to express their opinions, often about issues irrelevant to the items on the committee’s agenda.
Such behavior affected the progress of Finance Committee meetings since he had to allocate a great deal of time to handle them, Chan said.
Particularly, committee proceedings were obstructed by individual members’ disorderly behavior, as a way of political grandstanding against the High Court decision of disqualification of four lawmakers. Chan said he felt “very anxious” about this, as the meetings were held up.
The High Court on July 14 disqualified four opposition lawmakers from their seats in LegCo for violating the legal requirements of oath-taking when being sworn in.
Meanwhile, some 16 hours of Finance Committee meeting time were occupied as lawmakers tabled adjournment motions to meetings, accounting for 13 percent of total time.
“I feel sad as items which concerned about people’s livelihood and infrastructure projects were not deliberated and approved,” Chan noted.
He added that he would present the amendments to lawmakers in October when the LegCo starts its new work year.
In 2016-17, the Finance Committee approved 29 government funding items, worth HK$73.1 billion. Five items were not dealt with.
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