Maria Tam is a member of the Committee for the Basic Law of the National People's Congress Standing Committee since 1997 and the chairman of the Operations Review Committee of the Independent Commission Against Corruption since 2015.
30 Facts About Maria Tam
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Maria Tam was a member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee and took up various appointments from the Beijing government after she departed from the colonial government over the conflict of interest scandal in 1991.
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Maria Tam was born on 2 November 1945 in Hong Kong to Maria Tam Chung, a senior police officer.
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Maria Tam graduated from the St Paul's Co-educational College before she obtained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of London and her admission as a barrister at the Gray's Inn.
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Maria Tam first stepped into politics when she ran in the 1979 Urban Council election as an advocate for women's rights.
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Maria Tam was elected with more than 5,000 votes, the third ranked in the election behind veteran Urban Councillors Elsie Elliott and Denny Huang.
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Maria Tam was appointed to sit on the Legislative Council in 1981.
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Maria Tam was one of the recipients of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award and was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1982.
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Maria Tam became the appointed member of the Central and Western District Board when the board was first created in 1982 under the district administration reform by Governor Murray MacLehose.
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Maria Tam became a member of four different levels of representative councils in Hong Kong when she was appointed to the Executive Council, the top advisory body in the colonial government in 1983.
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Maria Tam was one of the members of the delegation of the unofficial members of the Executive and Legislative Councils led by Sir Chung Sze-yuen to London and Beijing to lobby for the interests of the Hong Kong people.
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Maria Tam was appointed by the Beijing government to sit on the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee in 1985 which was responsible for the drafting of the Basic Law of Hong Kong, the mini-constitution of the post-1997 Hong Kong.
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Maria Tam was awarded an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1985, and a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1988.
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Maria Tam founded both the Federation of Women Lawyers and the Junior Police Officers' Association.
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Maria Tam accepted various appointments in the run up to 1997, including to the Preparatory Committee for the HKSAR, and as a Hong Kong Affairs Advisor and member of the Selection Committee.
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Maria Tam was elected to the Provisional Legislative Council installed by Beijing.
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Maria Tam subsequently resigned from the PLC to take a seat on the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee of the National People's Congress Standing Committee in 1997.
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In that capacity, Maria Tam became one of the most loyal mouthpieces of the Beijing authorities on legal matters, especially in defence of controversial interpretations of the Basic Law and in the constitutional reform debate after 1997.
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In 2005 when the Progressive Alliance was merged into the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, Maria Tam became the party vice-chairman from 2005 to 2007.
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Maria Tam held various public positions at the time, such as member of the Urban Renewal Authority and the Airport Authority Hong Kong.
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Maria Tam even said that anyone who did not support the Article 23 legislation was not fit to be Chinese.
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In February 2006, Maria Tam joined the board of subsequently Hong Kong-listed mainland Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Limited, one of the world's largest paperboard manufacturers, whose conditions for workers at its plants were sharply criticised in the 2008 human rights report by the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China and by Hong Kong's Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour.
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Maria Tam became the convenor of National People's Congress Hong Kong delegation from March 2013.
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Maria Tam suggested that an interpretation of the Basic Law by Beijing could be the last option for determining how universal suffrage could be implemented for the 2017 Chief Executive election.
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Maria Tam received the Grand Bauhinia Medal, the highest award under the HKSAR honours and awards system, on 1 July 2013.
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In 2015, Maria Tam was appointed chairman of the Operations Review Committee of the Independent Commission Against Corruption by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
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In 2017, Maria Tam was the founding president of the Junior Police Officers' Association fund which raised over HK$10 million for the families of the seven police officers who were convicted and jailed for two years for beating activist Ken Tsang Kin-chiu at the height of the Occupy protests in 2014.
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In November 2020, following the expulsion of 4 pro-democracy lawmakers from the Legislative Council, Maria Tam said that NPCSC decisions are not challengeable, and that any judicial review would almost certainly fail.
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In February 2021, following the 2020 Hong Kong Legislative Council mass resignations, Maria Tam claimed that there were not enough members of the Legislative Council to decide on reforms of the electoral system, and therefore the NPCSC would take charge of such reforms.
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In December 2021, during the 2021 Hong Kong legislative election, Maria Tam played down the record-low voter turnout.