Ho Iat Seng calls for progressive AL reform

Ho Iat Seng

The Legislative Assembly (AL) president Ho Iat Seng said that while it is impossible to have full and immediate universal suffrage embedded in the legislature, he does not oppose increasing the proportion of directly and indirectly elected seats.
“I would not rule out the idea that it is the best to have all seats directly elected. However, judging from the current situation where we have a certain amount of appointed seats in the AL, we cannot immediately have full universal suffrage. (…)I do not object to the increase in the proportion of indirectly [and directly] elected seats,” he said.
The Chief Executive appointed seven of the 33 seats in the current AL. 14 were directly elected and 22 indirectly elected.
The president also commented on some lawmakers’ criticism of the AL Rules and Regulations, which prevents them from enquiring about the same issue more than once in a legislative session.
He said that allowing lawmakers to enquire about a particular issue more than once is a waste of resources. He therefore recommended AL members consider their enquiries so that they can generate more profound questions regarding the issue.
“For the lawmakers, they should discipline themselves. You cannot raise the same issue multiple times. This is not a good thing. This will waste a lot of AL resources. I hope that they can [consider an issue] from different perspectives so that, for example, if [a lawmaker] enquired about an issue and the government failed to reply properly, they can approach [the issue] from another perspective and come up with a more thoughtful question,” he said. JPL