Legislative president also believes his successor will be able to take advantage of his experience and do a better job
TONY.CHEUNG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Tuesday, 05 July, 2016, 7:52pm
Legco president Jasper Tsang says just being in the job for eight years is an achievement in itself. Photo: Sam Tsang
Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing predicts that “things will work out fine” for Hong Kong and the legislature after his retirement and that his successor “will do a better job”.
The Beijing-loyalist was speaking two months before the Legco polls, which mark a major shift for both the pan-democratic and pro-establishment camps, with Tsang and at least eight other veteran lawmakers voluntarily making way for younger politicians. It is also the last showdown between the blocs before the poll for chief executive in March.
Earlier this year, Feng Wei, deputy director of Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said he was prepared for several young radicals winning Legco seats in September.
Legco’s House Committee chairman, Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, has been tipped to succeed Tsang in October, leading commentators to question if the industrial representative is capable of taking the helm.
Without naming Leung, Tsang said: “The next president would always do a better job than I because he or she has my experience ... It would be very unwise of me to say that Legco will be worse without me. No, I think things will work out fine for Legco and for Hong Kong as well.”
Tsang started his Legco career when he was elected by a 400-strong committee to the provisional legislature that operated for a year after the 1997 handover. Since 1998 he has been a directly elected lawmaker and he became Legco president in 2008.
Over the last four years Tsang was involved in several controversial decisions as he handled radical lawmakers’ filibustering attempts to derail government bills or proposals deemed unpopular.
Asked to comment on how Legco had changed since 2008, Tsang said being able to preside over Legco for eight years was in itself an achievement.
“Many people seem to think that Legco has sort of degraded in the last eight years into a farcical organisation,” Tsang said. “[But] many colleagues in Legco understand that the president ... does not dictate how the whole council behaves.”
The election of Wong Yuk-man led to a new culture in Legco, according to Jasper Tsang. Photo: Sam TsangHe noted that the start of his tenure as president came a month after the radical Wong Yuk-man was elected lawmaker, and “a new kind of culture developed” in Legco.
“He is very clever [and came up with] lots of ingenious ways to challenge the rules ... and many people believed that I simply did not have the ability to deal with this kind of situation. Now, eight years have passed, I am still here, I think that is some achievement.”
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1985665/things-will-work-out-fine-hong-kong-retiring-legco-chief
