G.F. 316
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4. We agreed with the Paper that changes in the method
of appointment of ExCo Members were better avoided, and that
there should be no changes in ExCo's relationship with LegCo.
5. On LegCo membership and the question of direct elections,
we pointed out that the Paper said very little about the difficulties caused by the Chinese attitude. This might
possibly be because ExCo as a whole were
a whole were so familiar with
these difficulties, but we nevertheless felt that the Paper
gave a slightly misleading impression in this respect.
6. On the question of the Presidency of LegCo and references
to it in possible conclusions of the 1987 Review, you asked whether it made sense to try to get changes accepted by the Chinese at the same time as we were trying to get them to
accept the concept of direct elections. The Governor said
that he did not think that the changes envisaged would
necessarily be difficult for the Chinese. We asked whether
it was contemplated that option (c) in para 26 should be
implemented now so that we could move to option (a) in 1987,
or whether option (c) should be adopted in 1987. It was
accepted that the Paper was not entirely clear on this point
and Mr. Scott agreed to give further thought to this.
Basic Law Paper
7.
On the Basic Law Paper, we asked whether it was really
realistic to envisage putting over our views on the Basic
Law before the April meeting of the BLDC, and also whether
there was any hard evidence that the Chinese were already
drafting the Basic Law. On the second point, the Governor
confirmed that there was no hard evidence.
8.
On the first point, the Governor said that consideration.
of this Paper was rapidly leading him to the view that we had
to re-think our tactics for getting over our ideas to the
Chinese. He no longer believed that it would be possible
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/to do this