ii.
iii.
iv.
No explanation is given as to why visits to 604 households out of the 1920 selected and a further 326 interviews were unsuccessful.
It contains inappropriate, subjective language. For example, in paragraph 22 of the Summary of Findings, and makes some play with the "younger generation".
It contains inaccuracies and mis- leading statements. For example, paragraph 17 of the Summary of Findings states that most of those in favour of elected membership of the Legislative Council feel that the composition should be split equally between elected and non-elected members, whereas only 39% of the group hold this opinion. This group is the largest, but that is not the same as "most".
V v. The Chinese versions of the questions
were poorly worded, and likely to have been misleading to respondents unfamil- iar with the concepts involved. For example in Questions 2 and 4 (c) the difference between "elected" and "selected", ie appointed, is not made clear, It is assumed that probably nearly all the interviews were conducted in Chinese.
vi. All these points seem to work in one
direction, in favour of the Reform
Club position.
It seems therefore that, although these shortcomings may not discredit the report completely, they do indicate that it is probably a fairly sloppy piece of work and may be biased, We do not, of course, intend to take up these points with the Reform Club, or publicly.
3.
Our own informal assessment of the public attitude towards elected membership of the Legislative Council is that people are indifferent. This indifference may be due to some scepticism about the benefits of an elective system based on assessments of the situation elsewhere and, possibly, of the performance of elected members of the Urban Council here. There is no substan- tial tradition of the democratic process as we know it. There is a fairly widespread view that the boat should not be rocked, and some awareness that elections could lead to a public polarization of political attitudes and that this could be dangerous for the stability of Hong Kong. In general we believe that most of the
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