as part of a Memorandum of Understanding on immediate issues,
to introduce legislation to their effect.
DISTRICT BOARD AND MUNICIPAL COUNCIL ELECTIONS (1994/95)
45. The Governor proposed in October 1992 that all members of
the District Boards and Municipal Councils should be
directly-elected (except for ex-officio members in the New Territories, who are elected representatives of villages).
46. Since their inception the District Boards and Municipal Councils have been moving away from a wholly appointed membership towards an elected membership. The Governor's proposal is fully consistent with the principle of open and fair elections, and of the gradual development of Hong Kong's political system.
47.
The Chinese proposal made in Round 4 of the talks was
that the nature, functions and method for forming the District
Organisations should remain unchanged. Appointed membership
should be retained. In Round 15 they proposed a small
reduction in the number of appointed members (from 31.7% to
27.2% in the case of the District Boards). Later in the same
Round they proposed that, as part of an interim understanding
on the District Boards and Municipal Councils, the two sides
should record their differing views on the abolition of
appointed membership, and that it should be left to the
Government of the SAR after 30 June 1997 to determine on its
own the number of appointed members in accordance with law. The British side built on this proposal in producing the fifth
point in the draft Memorandum of Understanding at Annex
This would have enabled the British side to introduce
legislation to abolish appointed membership at the 1994-5 elections, without prejudice to a future decision by the SAR
authorities on whether to reinstate them. But the Chinese side
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