Nov 84
indirect elections
Feb 88
10 directly elected Grats for 19al.
(Mr Maude) There has been a good deal of consultation.
There was the
first consultation process back in, I think, 1987 or 1988 which came up
with results which were fairly inclusive.
OMELCO, of course, carried out
its own perhaps fairly ad-hoc but I think perhaps effective consultation
process in the course of drawing up their consensus in the middle of last
year, but in addition, there was, of course, a consultative process
connected with the drawing-up of the Basic Law and there was a Basic Law
Consultative Committee which was widely representative and which enabled
Hong Kong opinion to be fed in. I do not contest for a moment that opinion
in Hong Kong favoured a faster process towards full democracy. I do not
contest that for a moment but equally, although there was a desire for it,
a desire not to make arrangements in the meantime which would
lead inevitably to a crash in 1997, a reversal in 1997.
there was
Mr Rowlands
32.
Mr Maude, I would like to take up a point you made in an
earlier answer to Mr Shore's question, that you could envisage a change in
the Basic Law to increase the democratic element and anticipating even
possible changes before 1997. If that is a possibility, why are you
painting a picture to us of a situation where, if we established OMELCO's
50 per cent. before 1997 or the even more radical suggestion this Committee
made about democracy, the Chinese authorities will overturn it?
If you
already envisage, as you have just confessed or admitted to Mr Shore, the
possibility that you could go further and, therefore, the Basic Law would
be adjusted and changed to meet the increased democratic element, why not,
in fact, push it further and establish a really good democratic bridgehead
by 1997, better than the one that has been proposed, and on the assumption
and belief that, in fact, it was not in the interests of the Chinese
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