Judge the truth from Ma's words

The recent barrage launched against Civic Party lawmaker Dennis Kwok Wing-hang by Beijing's two agencies responsible for Hong Kong affairs has provided a temporary distraction of sorts from the pandemic woes.

While the coronavirus crisis continues to unfold, the statements by Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office and the Central Government's Liaison Office in parallel with liaison director Luo Huining's warning has renewed a heated local debate on national security - a long-running issue which has haunted the SAR since the handover in 1997.

While public concern over the pandemic is still higher, for now, than the Basic Law's hugely controversial Article 23, the latter will not go away until it is dealt with to the satisfaction of the central government.

Could Beijing be paving the way to disqualifiy Kwok from the legislature and reintroduce Article 23? Judging by the grave stance of the two Beijing bodies, such a probability remains.

Meanwhile, I was alarmed to read Reuters' report that claimed Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li had been regularly under pressure from Beijing. It also claimed that a few senior judges - who were not named in the report - had expressed concerns that Beijing was trying to limit the authority of Hong Kong courts in passing rulings on constitutional matters.

It would, of course, be cause for grave concern, provided the Reuters report - which even quoted someone close to Ma to support the interference claims by Beijing - was true.

Without doubt, there is nothing more important than having a judicial system that can truly act independently, adhering to sound legal principles and free of political interference.

But the question is whether words from a few unnamed senior judges plus a supposedly close aide to Ma are sufficient ground for such allegations.

To everyone's surprise, the chief justice put out a statement on Wednesday evening, saying he had not experienced the interference, as reported by Reuters, since he succeeded Andrew Li Kwok-nang in 2010 to become the SAR's second chief justice.

As soon as Reuters ran the report, representatives of the legal sub-sector on the Election Committee that selects the chief executive immediately issued a statement calling on Beijing to respect the judicial independence and refrain from doing or saying anything that might be perceived as interference.

Anyone covering legal news would be able to point out that it is extremely rare for Ma to make a public speech, let alone to comment on a news report. The opening ceremony of the legal year is one of the few official occasions in which he shares his thoughts.

So it was extraordinary when he instructed the judiciary to release a statement on his behalf to clarify matters.

It was necessary for him to make the clarification this time in light of the political tsunamis that it could potentially create. Failing to provide a clarification would have caused confidence in the judiciary to be undermined if the public believed interference had taken place.

As former Director of Public Prosecutions Grenville Cross has remarked, nobody knows who the three judges cited in the report are, what positions they hold, what grievances they may have or what their motivations are for not speaking on the record.

The only piece of information with an identified source that we have so far is Ma's statement.

In light of this, only Ma's account matters.