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March 14, 2005
You are on the invidual archive page of Hong Kong flip flops. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
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Hong Kong flip flops
Over the weekend the NPC declared "legislative intent" of the Basic Law was for a 2 year term for Hong Kong's new Chief Executive, Donald Tsang. This has forced some of the great and good into some verbal gymnastics to reverse their ealier declaration that a 5 year term is clear in the Basic Law. The SCMP reports Dr Raymond Wu said: Perhaps my memory is wrong or my understanding of the views of other drafters is incorrect...I can't say I am right while others are wrong. It doesn't matter to me whether the new chief executive serves a two-year or five-year term.It might not matter to him, but it does to a lot of others. Another flip-flopper: Former solicitor-general Daniel Fung Wah-kin, who also originally backed a five-year term, said he, too, was convinced by Beijing's rationale. "Courts in countries [with] common-law systems also consider legislative intent when they interpret constitutional provisions."Beijing can be awfully persuasive. This idea of "legislative intent" is great. Now instead of relying what's written in plain language on paper, we get to guess what the drafters were actually thinking when they wrote those words. And if we guess wrong, Beijing will help us to get the "right" answer. Why not just junk the Basic Law entirely? That's effectively what's happening piece by piece. Forget about re-interpretation, now the law is all about guessing games. Anyone for charades? posted by Simon on 03.14.05 at 01:43 PM in the
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/70911 Send a manual trackback ping to this post. http://www.plum-blossom.net/blog/archives/2005/03/after_sj_elsie.php Excerpt: After SJ Elsie Leung discovered on Sunday a “legislative intent” previously unheard of in Hong Kong and even unknown to the SAR government, everyone's been switching gears to agree with the future CE's two-year term, including the SAR gover... Weblog: Plum Blossoms Tracked: March 15, 2005 02:14 PM Why Two Years Excerpt: After SJ Elsie Leung discovered on Sunday a “legislative intent” previously unheard of in Hong Kong and even unknown to the SAR government, everyone's been switching gears to agree with the future CE's two-year term, including the SAR gover... Weblog: Plum Blossoms Tracked: March 15, 2005 05:41 PM |
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