A proposal to reform the medical watchdog goes back before Legco this week amid rising acrimony

Doctors in Hong Kong are not normally associated with protest action, but that has changed with the city's medics staging their second major rally in the past year.

Their first foray in the public domain last October, fighting for better wages for senior doctors, gained much community support. But their most recent action - a sit-in by 400 doctors outside the Legislative Council building last Wednesday against a government proposal to reform the Medical Council - drew a much more lukewarm response.

The shortcomings of the Medical Council, which licences and disciplines doctors, was highlighted in the case of singer Peter Cheung Shung-tak and his wife, former actress Eugina Lau Mei-kuen, who spent nine years battling for justice over the death of their newborn son in 2005.

Few would argue the council needs overhauling to address its myriad problems. These include a lack of transparency and a perception that protecting peers takes priority over public interest.

Also of concern is the long waiting time for people wanting to lodge complaints against doctors, and the low number of complaints that make it to disciplinary hearings. The average is about 22 cases out of 500 each year.

But the government proposal - which aims to restore public confidence and speed up the average waiting for a hearing from 58 months to 24 months - has failed to please the medical sector.

The second reading of the bill was suspended in Legco last week amid objections from doctors' groups, and will be resumed tomorrow. The doctors fear the reform proposal is a political move to dominate the council with government supporters, compromising its professional autonomy.

Tensions in the medical sector date back to the 79-day Occupy movement in 2014. A group of 550 older doctors signed a petition likening the protests to a "cancer" in society, while younger ones formed a new group, Médecins Inspirés, that supported the pro-democracy movement.

At present, 14 of the council's 28 members are appointed by the chief executive. Of the other 14, seven are elected by the city's largest doctors' group, the Medical Association, and seven are elected by registered doctors. The government has proposed adding four appointed lay members to the council, making a total of eight lay people, expanding the membership to 32. The four extra seats would consist of three members elected by patients' organisations and one nominated by the Consumer Council.

The most controversial idea is to change two appointed positions to elected positions - but only to be voted by the specialists' training school, the Academy of Medicine.

While doctors' groups, including the Medical Association, Doctors' Union, Public Doctors' Association and others, support more lay people, they say the two seats should be open for election by all doctors instead of a "small circle".

They want an alternative plan, such as one floated by medical sector lawmaker Dr Leung Ka-lau, to add six lay members and six elected doctors to the council, so that the ratio of appointed to elected members would be even.

The argument has appealed to some pan-democratic parties, including the Labour Party and Civic Party, citing Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's appointment of Beijing-loyalist Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung to chair the University of Hong Kong's governing council despite opposition from alumni and students.

HKU microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung and other fellows have proposed an extraordinary general meeting of the academy to clarify the matter and urge two seats to be opened up for "direct election" by all doctors.

Former president of the Medical Association Dr Louis Shih Tai-cho said younger doctors had also suggested the seven seats from the group be directly elected.

Ho believes the reform issue has created a ripple effect among practitioners in seeking a more democratic composition of representative bodies.

The fate of the reform depends on whether the doctors can patch up their differences, lobby support from lawmakers and persuade the public to support them.