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öult
pr. Electing
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MDHIAN 7784
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SECRET
FM HONG KONG
TO IMMEDIATE FCO
TELNO 1563
OF 04104OZ OCTOBER 93
INFO IMMEDIATE PEKING, UKREP JLG HONG KONG
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Boundary and Election Commission: Deadline for Submitting Recommendations on Municipal Council Constituency Boundaries
Summary
1. The Boundary and Election Commission (BEC) is required under the law to submit recommendations on the 1995 Municipal Council (MC) constituency boundaries to the Governor by 31 December 1993, but its work will be abortive given our plan, as part of our constitutional proposals, to increase in any event the number of elected MC seats. We therefore propose to seek legislative amendment to extend the deadline for BEC to submit its recommendations to 30 April 1994.
Detail
2. Under the BEC Ordinance, the BEC is required to submit to the Governor, by 31 December 1993, recommendations on the 1995 MC constituency boundaries. The Ordinance also required the BEC to produce provisional recommendations for public consultation for 30 days prior to making its submission to the Governor. In practical terms, this means that the BEC will have to publish its provisional recommendations by end October at the latest.
3. As you are aware, we already plan, as part of the constitutional package, to abolish all appointed MC seats and consequentially increase the number of elected seats: from 15 to 32 for the Urban Council (UC) and from 12 to 27 for the Regional Council (RC). The BEC should ideally take account of these proposed increases in elected seats when drawing up the constituency boundaries. However, according to the BEC Ordinance, it must work on the basis of the number of elected seats as currently provided for in our legislation, i.e. 15 for UC and 12 for RC. If nothing is done about this, and assuming that whatever the outcome of the talks we did not/not change our proposals to abolish appointed MC seats and increase the number of elected MC
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