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4. Moreover one can take the thought a step further by noting the parallels between the Annex I Election Committee and the Selection Committee which the HKSAR Preparatory Committee is to establish in 1996/97 and which is to recommend the first Chief Executive: the Selection Committee is to have 100 members from each of the four categories, whereas the Election Committee is to have 200. The other main difference is that the Selection Committee is to be established by the SARG Preparatory Committee, while the Election Committee is to be elected in accordance with law: both Committees are to be "broadly representative".
5.
An ambitious approach might therefore be to try to agree with the Chinese on a 1995 Election Committee of 400 members
(elected or appointed) with the understanding that this would become the Selection Committee in 1996/97. Of course such a proposal, helpful though it would be for a smooth transition, would fan the flames of Chinese suspicion of a British plot to keep power in Hong Kong after 1997 and/or to make Hong Kong ungovernable. They indicated pretty clearly in previous discussions about the Chief Executive that they expected the Selection Committee to rubber-stamp their chosen candidate (or, as they politely put it, the candidate on whom the two Governments had agreed).
6. We failed to secure better wording in the Joint Declaration than that the Chief Executive "shall be selected by elections or through consultations held locally". We cannot expect the Chinese to allow us to improve on this now, but we can perhaps try to put quiet pressure on them to pay more than lip-service to the concepts endorsed in the Basic Law.
7. To summarise crudely: unilateral action to set up a 1995 Election Committee which has no relationship to the Basic Law provisions for the 1999 Election Committee and the 1997 Selection Committee might somewhat increase the democratic element in the 1995 LegCo, a LegCo which may or may not survive until 1999; but it would probably leave the Chinese with a freer hand to dictate the choice of Chief Executive in 1997 and 2002 and the choice of six LegCo members in 1999, than if we were to proceed by agreement.
should
8.
I do not know that I am persuaded by this argument we let a medium-term "better" be the enemy of a short-term "good", particularly if the medium-term benefit is so hypothetical ? But it is perhaps worth including in our reflections.
Yours sincerely,
Nigel
NJ COX
Hong Kong Department
CC Sir John Coles
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