HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 28 February 1990
香港立法局
————————一九九0年二月二十八日
38
The attitude of some of my honourable colleagues seems to be that, notwithstanding our long-standing support for our own consensus political model, we ought now to accept the secret deal reached two weeks ago by Britain and China and try to make the best of a bad deal. There is nothing we can do, we are told, so we ought to take what we are given and not complain ( ). This line, which has the warm endorsement of both Mr. Douglas HURD, the British Foreign Secretary, and Mr. LI Hou, the Secretary General of Basic Law Drafting Committee, contends that any confrontation with China will be bad for Hong Kong. Since we cannot change anything, we should not risk any ill will with China by trying. Rather, the people of Hong Kong should concentrate on making money and co-operate in making a success of the arrangements Britain and China have chosen for them, even though we might feel disappointed or even betrayed.
To many people in Hong Kong, this argument has some appeal, and no, doubt, many of them will continue to work to provide for their families. Yet, at the same time, if they have the resources to do so, they will look for a way to secure a passport and leave Hong Kong. They will join the tens and tens of thousands who have already left and the hundreds of thousands who plan to leave before 1997.
This attitude of *, which is implicit in this motion, and all the talk about making the Sino-British deal work simply will not fool the people of Hong Kong into believing that stability has been achieved. The essence of the OMELCO consensus model is that it is the bottom line, the very minimum of democratic reform that must be implemented if people's confidence in the future of the territory is to be restored. But, it is a very modest plan and it falls far short of the proposal of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons for one half of the Legislative Councillors to be directly elected in 1991 and all in 1995.
This Council knows very well that if people are not allowed to focus their energies in building a democratic future for Hong Kong, they will spend those energies in finding an escape route. Indeed, our consensus was achieved on this basis. It would be highly disingenuous for this Council now to suggest that the people of Hong Kong should simply abandon our aspirations and make the best of what we have ourselves said was below the bottom line. For us to accept this motion is to encourage our people to flee Hong Kong.
No, the interest of Hong Kong does not lie in giving up and passively accepting what Britain and China tell us our future will be. The moment that we