About a dozen radical supporters of Hong Kong separatism forced their way into the conference room where the Eastern District Council was to meet on Tuesday afternoon, causing the meeting to be canceled. It seems the mob's real target was Anne Teng Yu-yan, the returning officer who disqualified Agnes Chow as a candidate in the Legislative Council by-election to be held in March, because she rightly deemed her nomination to be invalid as Chow's party advocates "democratic self-determination with independence as an option".

Details on the eligibility to be nominated as a candidate, disqualification for being nominated as a candidate and from being elected as a Legislative Council member, and the requirements to be complied with by people nominated as candidates are set out in the Legislative Council Ordinance, which stipulates that a person can only be validly nominated as a candidate if they submit a signed declaration stating they will uphold the Basic Law. This in turn stipulates that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China.

Those who advocate "Hong Kong independence" in any shape or form are thus ineligible to hold public office, and the returning officer was correctly doing her job and fulfilling her duty by ruling Chow's nomination as a candidate was invalid. The returning officers help ensure that elections in Hong Kong are conducted openly, fairly and honestly.

In 2016, six opposition politicians who were elected as members of the Legislative Council were disqualified because they openly violated the Basic Law and other Hong Kong laws when taking their oath. They failed to uphold the commitments of their signed declarations and their acts of moral turpitude shocked all law-abiding Hong Kong residents.

Thankfully, despite what these separatists claim, the rule of law remains effective in the special administrative region and those Hong Kong residents who are not seeking their 15 minutes in the media spotlight are not fooled by their words and are dismissive of such childish stunts as the one on Thursday.

However, some radical separatists have been sentenced to prison after they resorted to violence in pursuit of their political aims. The moderate members of the opposition camp should dissociate themselves lest they become ensnared in acts whose legal consequences they did not anticipate.