Opposition Hong Kong district councillors ready to quit rather than take new oath of allegiance

A handful have already made up their minds to resign and others are weighing it, worried that even if they did take the oaths, they would later be ruled invalid

‘The government has the ultimate power to decide whether you will be disqualified, and that also affects the payments we have received since we assumed office, as they might ask you to recover the costs,’ says Yuen Long councillor Lam Chun

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Residents queue up to cast their votes in the 2019 district council elections. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 8:30am, 28 Mar 2021Updated: 8:44am, 28 Mar 2021

A number of Hong Kong opposition district councillors have said they would rather resign than take an oath of allegiance, with some worried that even if they gave in to the new requirement, they could be asked to return public funds if their pledges were later deemed unconvincing.

While many of the 452 district councillors in the city said they would stay in office as they did not want to hand over their seats, at least four raised concerns over the drastic outcome if authorities eventually ruled their oaths invalid.

The new oath-taking requirement may pave the way for a mass disqualification of opposition members, while a source told the Post that all of the 19 district councillors among the 47 activists earlier charged with subversion under the national security law were likely to be unseated.

Lam Chun, a Yuen Long district councillor who was earlier charged with rioting in connection with the Polytechnic University (PolyU) campus protests in 2019, told the Post that he had considered quitting, although he had not made up his mind.

“The government has the ultimate power to decide whether you will be disqualified, and that also affects the payments we have received since we assumed office, as they might ask you to recover the costs,” he said, adding that by resigning now and avoiding taking the oath, he might still have a chance to run for Legislative Council.

The draft oath-taking legislation – called the Public Offices (Candidacy and Taking Up Offices) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2021 – seeks to extend the current requirement to make a loyalty pledge for government officials and lawmakers to include members of the 18 district councils.