The NPCSC meeting begins today and its decision will be critical to how Hong Kong will elect the CE in 2017 and whether some groups will launch civil disobedience action to occupy Central in September.
The meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) kicks off today and will last for a week. 12 delegates from Hong Kong are attending the meeting and are likely to voice their perspectives on the 2017 CE election methods. There will be a vote by the end of the meeting on August 31st as to whether the NPCSC will formally give a green light for Hong Kong to initiate the political reform. Should this be the case, Hong Kong will enter the ‘Third Step’ of the political reform – a election proposal which must be passed by two-thirds of the vote in LegCo. While some delegates, including Cheng Yiu-tong from FTU, hinted that the NPCSC will conclude a high threshold for nomination, pan-democrats urged for more negotiation room. Occupy Central organisers, several democratic parties and some student groups announced last week that they will launch the civil disobedience action if NPCSC decides to set the nomination barrier at 50% of the Nomination Committee.
On Friday August 29th, Subcommittee on Retirement Protection in LegCo will discuss the consultancy study on retirement protection in Hong Kong which was issued last week. Nelson Chow, a professor from HKU, was hired by the Government to do the study. In the report, Professor Chow proposed a universal retirement pension of $3,000 a month for everyone aged 65 and over. This will be financed by a payroll old-age tax of up to 2.5 percent and $50 billion seed funding from the Government.
