Police can't solve political problems: Felix Chung

Felix Chung says more resources for the police are reasonable. Photo: RTHK

Liberal Party leader Felix Chung has criticised the government for attempting to use the police to solve political problems, though he said it was right to allocate extra resources for the force.



Chung made the remarks amid growing criticism of Financial Secretary Paul Chan's proposal in his budget last week to give the force a 25 percent increase in funding, taking its budget to HK$25.8 billion.



"The increase of resources for the police force, I think, is reasonable because of the increase in crimes," Chung told RTHK's Ian Pooler on Tuesday.



"But of course we understand that, part of the reason of the increase in crimes is because of the protests, the demonstrations, the discontent to the Hong Kong government," he said.



"The Hong Kong police is just put into the frontline, to face a problem. So political-wise, the Hong Kong government should give an answer to the general public. This is a political issue; it should be solved in a political way."



Police Commissioner Chris Tang said on Monday that a sharp increase in crime justified the extra budget. Overall crime rose by 9.2 per cent last year as more and more police resources were deployed to crack down on anti-government protests.



However Civic Party leader Alvin Yeung said on Monday that he was against any extra resources going to the police.



"My biggest concern is the mentality reflected by this huge increase in resources from the leaders of the government and the police force," he told RTHK's Annemarie Evans.



"It's as if they don't agree that the root cause of the problems came from politics, it came from the misgovernance of this administration."