28 July 2003


Dear Fellow Engineer


The National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill – Update as at 28 July 2003

Yielding to the public demand, the government decided to make a last-minute decision to defer the resumption of the second reading of the captioned Bill on 7 July 2003. 

LegCo Bills Committee on the proposed legislation met for the first time on 23 July since then. At the meeting, the Committee was informed by Timothy Tong, Acting Permanent Security for Security, that the government planned to release a revised draft of the legislation in the form of a consultation paper in September. The paper would comprise the full text of the blue bill, the 51 amendments later proposed by the government and the subsequent concessions in three controversial areas, namely, proscription of organisations, the emergency powers of police and the absence of “public interest defence”. Should there be any new development, I shall let you know. 

Originally, I intended to include a separate report on the issue in the August issue of HKIE's “Hong Kong Engineer” Journal. However, my request for an extra page was turned down by the HKIE. Still, I believe that it is one of the most effective ways to reach a large number of fellow Engineers given the fact the HKIE does not usually release their membership database to outside party including myself. Due to the same limitation, I could only rely on my contact database of about 3,000 Engineers to conduct a survey on the Bill. 

At the time of writing this letter, I have received a total of 1,472 replies from fellow Engineers giving their views on the Bill. Following is a breakdown of different views:

No. of returns

Indicate “no” to the Bill # 1,262
Indicate “support” to the Bill 104
Request me to “abstain” in the vote 3
Other views without a clear indication of the position 103
TOTAL*: 1,472
                 ==== 
Remarks:
# There are 238 returns indicating that the resumption of second reading should be deferred.
There are 61 returns indicating that they agree with the need of the enactment Article 23 legislation
* These figures do not include the positions of associations and organisations such as HKIE, government engineering staff associations which I invited them to give their views. Most of these organisations have advised their members to give their views to me direct.

I trust that there are some interested Engineers who would like to receive the survey results, I should be most grateful if you could pass this report on to them. 

Regards,

Yours




(signed)
Ir Raymond HO Chung-tai