Basically, it's open to any interpretation | SCMP

At times like these, when Hong Kong is faced with another constitutional crisis and another Basic Law interpretation by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, one wishes that China were a more normal country, able to acknowledge that its leaders are human and capable of making mistakes.

But that is apparently not the case yet. The Communist Party persists in the notion that it should almost never admit that it is wrong.

......when the Hong Kong Basic Law was promulgated in 1990, the section defining people with the right of abode in Hong Kong simply said that "persons of Chinese nationality born outside Hong Kong" to Chinese citizens who were permanent residents of Hong Kong had the right of abode.......our Court of Final Appeal decided that all children of Hong Kong permanent residents, regardless of whether they were born before or after their parents acquired permanent residency, had the right of abode.

Instead of amending the Basic Law, Beijing resorted in 1999 to an interpretation by the Standing Committee. It was clearly a case of sloppy drafting, but the central government was unwilling to admit that it had made a mistake. Instead, it decided that the Hong Kong judiciary had made an error in its understanding of the Basic Law.

......a question of whether the new chief executive to be elected in July will serve a full five-year term or simply the remainder of Tung Chee-hwa's second term. The Basic Law is silent on this.

The proper thing to do would be for the NPC to amend the Basic Law. But that is not possible because it would imply that it had made a mistake in the first place in the drafting.

Therefore, the only recourse is for the Standing Committee to again issue an interpretation to say that something that very clearly is not in the Basic Law really is there after all, since that was the legislative intent - even though the legislators may have neglected to spell it out.

But this means that the Basic Law is not a document that Hong Kong, and the international community, can rely on, since no one can ever be sure that the law means what it says. Instead, it will be a case of the law meaning whatever the Standing Committee says that it means. Such a situation is fraught with danger for Hong Kong.

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