Strong public support for co-location

The Liberal Party released results of a public opinion poll which found more than 61 percent of 1,262 qualified respondents support the special administrative region government's draft plan for the co-location arrangements inside the West Kowloon Station of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL). It is yet another proof of majority backing for the popular measure, designed to let mainland immigration, customs and quarantine inspection authorities enforce mainland laws in a leased "port area" that all passengers must go through to board XRL trains. Several earlier polls consistently showed similar results, with majority support for the co-location arrangement.

Also on Tuesday, a group of legislative councilors who are practicing lawyers announced that they would found an alliance of law professionals dedicated to clearing away various make-believe scenarios dreamed up by the opposition camp to scare members of the public into rejecting the co-location arrangement. The move followed a succinct statement on Tuesday by Wang Guangya, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, that no interpretation by the National People's Congress Standing Committee of the relevant article(s) of the Basic Law is necessary to clear the co-location arrangement for launching.

It is about time Hong Kong's honest legal professionals stepped forward and helped the public see through the smokescreen of fear released by opposition "spin doctors" bent on demonizing everything related to the mainland despite the benefit the XRL will certainly bring to Hong Kong society. There is no doubt the opposition parties are desperate these days because they know they won't be able to block the SAR government's XRL bill regarding the co-location arrangement when the Legislative Council returns for business next month. That is why they are going all-out to hoodwink as many local residents as they can into believing the dark myths they have fabricated would come true.

People have been genuinely amazed recently by the imagination of those opposition politicians, including quite a few well-established lawyers who have tirelessly used their professional credentials for all sorts of fear-mongering over the years. The myths of horror they have spun out over the co-location arrangement since the government revealed the draft plan is nothing short of breathtaking but the majority of the local public know better and have scoffed at those wild tales all along. That said, more effort is necessary to inform the public about the truth of the co-location arrangement. This is so that even more Hong Kong residents will rally behind the SAR government in this war on lies to preserve the public interest as best we can.

(HK Edition 08/09/2017 page7)