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CONFIDENTIAL
official membership of the Council after 1997, and that it would be best for the Basic Law to provide for only two categories of members: directly elected (one third) and indirectly elected from functional constituencies (two-thirds). The SAR Government might find the Legislature as difficult to manage as the Hong Kong Government is doing.
4. We should also bear in mind that the post-1997 arrangement will cast a shadow forwards. Since we have proposed to the Chinese that the last Legislative Council, to be elected in 1995, would be constituted in the manner provided for in the Basic Law, it follows that the Hong Kong Government (and HMG) would have to get through the final two years of British rule with a Legislature lacking in any official or appointed members.
19 July 1988
CC: PS Lord Glenarthur
Mr Gillmore o.r.
RJT McLaren