City’s barristers want Bar Association to ‘step up to the plate’ on constitutional matters, says one of its new leaders

Legal scholar Johannes Chan gives assurance that legal body will not be politicised and will continue its ‘professional relationship’ with Beijing

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Liberal academic Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun, a newly elected Bar Association council board member, said the election results reflected expectations that the legal body would be more active in defending Hong Kong’s rule of law. Photo: Edward Wong

Published: 12:49pm, 19 Jan 2018Updated: 3:10pm, 19 Jan 2018

A historic turnout for the Hong Kong Bar Association election – with eight in 10 of the city’s practising barristers casting a vote – and its outcome reflected expectations that the legal body would “step up to the plate” on constitutional matters, one of its new leaders said on Friday.

Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun also hit back at criticism that the association’s work might be politicised as members of its 20-strong council, which governs the association, had previously represented activists or political figures in court.

In a Facebook post on Friday, barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a member of the executive council that advises the city’s chief executive, said the results were expected.

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He pointed out that the association’s new chairman Philip Dykes and other council members had been involved in defending “certain political groups” in a number of litigation cases.

A former chairman of the association, Tong added that he hoped the Bar Council would “steer clear of conflict of interest concerns when addressing all these sensitive political issues”.

Dykes defended two former lawmakers when the government took them to court over improper oath-taking.

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Four of the five newly elected members of the council, including Chan, had previously represented other disqualified lawmakers and activists, including those involved in the 2014 Occupy protests for greater democracy. One of the four, Lawrence Lok Ying-kam, had also defended a policeman accused of assaulting an activist during the same protests.