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Governor's Statement to LegCo : 2 December 1993
Mr. President, I should like to make a statement on the electoral arrangements for 1994 and 1995.
For the last seven months, negotiations have been continuing between Britain and China on the arrangements for the District Board elections in 1994 and the Municipal Council and LegCo elections in 1995: - After seventeen rounds, it has still not.... proved possible to reach agreement, even on the most urgent and uncontroversial issues.
These negotiations are not about the pace of democratisation in Hong Kong, though some of you think they should be. There is no argument between Britain and China over the principle that Hong Kong's democratic institutions should continue to develop. That is spelt out in the Joint Declaration, which provides that from 1 July 1997 the LegCo of the SAR "shall be constituted by elections". China's own Basic Law for the Hong Kong SAR sets out that process of democratic development in greater detail.
What is at issue is how to turn this principle into practice. In October 1992 I set out a number of proposals designed to achieve that. Those proposals, put forward with the full support of the British Government and after consultations in Hong Kong, were carefully designed to be fully consistent with the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and the relevant agreements and understandings between the two sides, an objective which - as was confirmed by the recent evidence of independent lawyers to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons was wholly achieved. But we always made clear that they were proposals, which we wished to discuss with the Chinese side. Our clear preference is to proceed by agreement with China, wherever we can, in the interests of continuity. That is why we pressed hard for talks on these matters between Britain and China, and were pleased when they eventually began in the spring.
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