Me
Mr Ricketts
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Reference
HKB 011/7/1
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NATIONALITY PROVISION FOR LEGCO MEMBERS
1.
I
You asked for any observations on Mr Cox's letter. agree with Mr Cox that, politically, there can be no question of our implementing any 20% nationality rule before 1997. would be almost impossible to defend a decision to bar for example, British nationals while permitting Chinese nationals unlimited seats.
2.
That said, I do not think there will be massive objection to our discussing with the Chinese its implementation after 1997. It will then be in force whatever we might wish. and in a manner that is highly subjective. It would be ostrich-like to argue that we should not even discuss this with the Chinese. Pragmatically, we would hope to agree some sort of objective criteria for deciding who of those with foreign right of abode should be able to continue to sit in LegCo. Indeed if we were to refuse to discuss this aspect, it would cast doubt on our demand to talk about the through train.
3. The converse of course is that the Chinese are likely to demand that we implement any agreement reached before 1997. This, as described above we could not accept in toto. However, we could undertake to implement it in a modified form in 1995. We could offer to require candidates to make public any foreign nationality they might hold. At a final resort we might even offer to implement a 20% rule for nationality other than British and Chinese nationals.
I suspect that such a rule is most unlikely to require any forced retirements from Legco.
4. If we do decide to discuss Nationality we will have to make up our minds about how we would implement it. We should strongly reject any suggestions of quotas in each of the three types of elections, or that those with foreign nationality or right of abode should only be eligible for the functional constituency seats. This sort of restriction, we could argue smacks too much of apartheid. It also seems odd
to deny foreigners the right to stand for election by the electoral committee: it is quite likely that the sort of person the Chinese argue require the E.C., ie established figures who do not wish to stand for other sorts of election.
5. I believe that we should argue for candidates to make their nationality and right of abode status public before the election. If after the election more than 12 'foreigners' are elected then we would, as Mr Cox has pointed out, require some means of deciding who would be removed.
natprov.min
CODE 18-77
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