RVNU TAVKU.
MED JU
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JL 10, 11
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6.
J
and
But if my aim is to safeguard the way of life for the six million people who make Hong Kong their home, an important component of that way of life is their participation in running their own affairs. To a considerable extent, public debate in Hong Kong among Hong Kong's friends in the wider world (of whom there are many in the US) rightly focuses on the degree to which we can boost that participation in the coming
years.
7
•
Both the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law
already envisage a greater role for Hong Kong's Legislature, and an increase in the number of its
directly-elected seats. All its members will be elected
directly or indirectly by the next elections in 1995.
8.
—
One thing is clear.
-
The people of Hong Kong
whenever they are asked want a greater measure of
democracy, delivered in a manner that can be sustained
through and beyond 1997. As Governor, and as a
politician who has spent his career engaged in that
cockpit of democracy in the House of Commons, I have to
respond to that challenge - within the limits imposed by the ink of international agreements and the implacable realities of history and geography.
9.
Those are constraints that are understood very
well by the people of Hong Kong better perhaps by them than by some who would want them to be the pawns of their own doubtless well-meaning preconceptions. If the people of Hong Kong are content with what I propose, then that should, in my book, be as good a reason as any for their
friends outside Hong Kong to be content as well.
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