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be assessed in the context of historical, economic, political and geographical constraints and other wishes of the people in the community. Single-minded obsession 4 with one single factor, say, public opinion, may distort our judgement, will drive us into extremist idealism and result in one-sided unrealistic policy formulation that will affect public confidence in Hong Kong.
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I wish to point out that the white
Paper has introduced some positive epoch-making plans. If you usher Hong Kong into an era of direct elections for the first time for nearly 150 years in its history,
this is a fundamental structural change in government system and is a spearhead of the democratisation process at the central government level. Compared with the issue of direct elections, the number of directly elected seats to the Legislative Council is a change of much
lesser significance. [Direct election to the Legislative
Council is a much preferred form of election over
the indirect election through the District Board Electoral College. The former allows direct grassroot input
22 into the legislature and direct participation in government
affairs. This is in line with the form of participatory
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The proposed geographically based
direct elections will also obviate the problem of double representation and will remove the unnecessary conflicts among members of the District Boards grouped under
the same constituency. However, as the directly elected elements are increased when we approach 1997, I would like to see a seat to be returned to the Legislative Council from each of the 19 District Board constituencies.
Now that the White Paper is published, with a firm dovernment commitment to direct elections
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