JUD INU. TUUOOU
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 13 July 1988
1863
Providing China's leadership continues to be moderate and stable-and I have no reason to believe that it will not continue to be so in the years ahead-the terms of article 4 augur well for the future prosperity of Hong Kong.
Chapter IV: Political Structure
Section 1: The Chief Executive
While I accept that in the long term, the Chief Executive may well be elected by direct election on a one-man-one-vote basis. I do not believe that direct election is advisable at the initial stage of formation of the Hong Kong SAR Government.
I have previously advocated that the Chief Executive be elected from among members of the legislature, which would still be my first choice. However, should the Chief Executive not be a member of the legislature, I would propose that in the formative years of the Hong Kong SAR Government the Chief Executive should be elected by a widely representative electoral college, which will be dissolved after the election is completed. This electoral college should be solely for the purpose of electing the Chief Executive and not used also to elect representatives to the Legislative Council.
The electoral college shall comprise between 600-1 000 representatives from all walks of life. The nominating committee however shall accept the nomina- tion of any permanent resident who receives the endorsement of at least 10 per cent of the membership of the electoral college, each member of which can endorse only one nomination.
In regard to article 55. I believe that at least three quarters of the Executive Council should come from the Legislative Council so as to ensure a working liaison between the executive authorities and the legislature.
Executive Councillors sitting in the legislature could then be given the responsibility of getting Government business moving through the legislative time-table, and of even answering questions at Question Time.
Section 3: The legislature
As regards the methods of constituting the Legislative Council in the Hong Kong SAR Government, I am in favour of starting off in 1997 without 70 members:
One third of the members to be elected by functional constituencies
One third by direct elections by districts
One third by a number of electoral colleges including the following:
The municipal councils
District boards
Groups of advisory boards and statutory boards