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abolition of appointed membership. The BEC itself is already well on the way to publishing in a few weeks time - draft constituency boundaries for the DB elections. But there are other technical arguments why this is in fact the case; and political reasons which I am convinced are overwhelming.
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The technical arguments against separation are of two kinds. First, several of the proposals under discussion apply to both sets of elections, e.g. reduction of the voting age, and the voting system. The constituency boundaries for the District Boards will be the building blocks for the Municipal Councils constituencies, and they in turn for LegCo. Secondly, even if it were possible to separate all this out, the problem would remain that our timetable for the 1995 LegCo election itself points to a deadline of December this year.
We have set this out in detail in the past. What it boils down to is that there are several large tasks to be performed once agreement is reached (this timetable is based on the assumption of an agreement; without one the timings might vary, depending on what electoral arrangements LegCo decided to adopt). Several months will be needed to instruct the law draftsman, and to get the legislation drafted. ExCo then needs time to consider the draft bills, and LegCo will need probably three months to examine, debate and enact it. This all has to be done by the end of the 1993/94 LegCo session because the Boundary and Election Commission will need to start work in the last quarter of 1994 to prepare to incorporate over 800,000 new FC voters, consult the hundreds of organisations concerned, draw up detailed guidelines (which by Law requires public consultation), lay down elections regulations. (subsidiary Legislation, subject to LegCo scrutiny) and launch a publicity campaign for the new arrangements. Because of the complexity of the election arrangements we calculate that voter registration should begin on 1 January 1995, for the EC election to be held in the summer, followed by the three types of election to LegCo itself in September.
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5. Let me make a U.K. comparison. Next year's European Elections notwithstanding, I do not imagine that the Home Office would generally regard as over-generous a gap of a year between the completion of legislation for an election (involving a new register) and the election date itself. We are talking here not of an election with one electoral method
geographically based constituencies - but an election with three methods of election; functional constituencies, geographical constituencies, and an Election Committee. ALL these questions of timing demand some
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