The Court of First Instance on Thursday began hearing legal presentations over a judicial review jointly filed by 24 opposition members of the Legislative Council that challenges the constitutionality of the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation, which took effect on Oct 5. Commonly referred to as the “anti-mask law”, the ban on face-covering at public rallies was introduced by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor by invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance (ERO). In their joint writ, the applicants seek to nullify the regulation on the ground that Lam “bypassed LegCo” by invoking the ERO, and by doing so, violated the Basic Law, which stipulates only LegCo is responsible for making laws in the Hong Kong SAR. What they failed to mention is that the Basic Law also allows a whole raft of “colonial-era” laws to remain effective after 1997, including the ERO. That means invoking the ERO to introduce the anti-mask law is not in conflict with the Basic Law.
Enacted in 1922, the ERO survived all the governors thereafter, including the very last one – Chris Patten – who now utterly hates certain “colonial-era” laws he didn’t abolish as governor. It was designed expressly for situations like the one Hong Kong has been embroiled in for nearly five months. And contrary to what the judicial review applicants claim in their legal presentation, Lam did not “bypass LegCo”. Rather, she introduced the anti-mask law with the mandate of the ERO. The accusation of bypassing does not hold water because the ERO allows the introduction of the anti-mask law before completing the normal legislative procedure. That is why it is called “the Emergency Regulations Ordinance” in the first place. And the anti-mask law was later brought up at LegCo for scrutiny when it reopened, which is called “negative vetting”.
In an attempt to dress up their porous arguments, the opposition lawmakers blamed Lam for all the crimes they managed to incite and still support to this day by insinuating the extradition law amendment legislation “triggered” the protests. With a close look back at how the painful events unfolded, one would see the “spark” that ignited the “fires” of endless riots was not the extradition law amendment bill but how the opposition camp labeled it and fanned antagonism. It was demonized for the masterminds of the illegal anti-establishment campaign to use as an excuse. The real, unspoken objective of “no extradition to China” is not to protect “Hong Kongers” at all. It is aimed at obstructing China’s peaceful development by messing up the Hong Kong SAR. Since there is no legal way to do it, they would have found a different excuse or even made up one without the extradition law amendment legislation. In short, the applicants in this case of judicial review are among those responsible for forcing the government to invoke the ERO.
(HK Edition 11/01/2019 page12)