Following is the transcript of remarks by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Carrie Lam, at a media session at the Legislative Council (LegCo) Complex yesterday (July 15):

Reporter: Mrs Lam, why did you say that some of the reasons of opposing the Medical Bill is unfounded? And what do you think of the, why did you describe this as the tyranny of the minority? Can you explain that?

Chief Secretary for Administration: Well, first of all, Legislative Council is a very important part of Hong Kong’s political system. It has very important constitutional functions to perform as provided for under the Basic Law. So voters, who elect the Legislative Council members, naturally have an expectation that members who are elected into this Chamber, they are there to deliberate government proposals, to pass legislations and pass funding proposals put up by the Government.

     But what we are now seeing, which is very prevalent in this term of the Legislative Council, that several members and clearly not a majority of the members in the Legislative Council, several members who dislike certain proposals of the Government, instead of just voting on the proposals after they have put forward their views, they are preventing that piece of legislation to go through a democratic process of being put to vote. So I can only describe this as what I have just called it “tyranny of the minority” because they are not majority, they are not obeying the rules of democracy, they are resorting, of course, what is now permissible under the Rules of Procedure. But I think they are abusing the Rules of Procedure to an extreme, to the extent that we are seeing not only the stalling of a very important livelihood legislation, but over the last few years a number of other important proposals have been either delayed or being forced to be put on hold.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Saturday, July 16, 2016
Issued at HKT 1:36

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