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would cause presentational problems (U-turns etc). Both these points, it seems to us, depend crucially on Hong Kong judgments. The essential reason for running these risks, if it was felt this was a tenable course of action in Hong Kong terms, would be to signal to China our readiness to move in the direction of concerns with which China is identified and hence increase the chance that the Chinese would be willing to acquiesce in the
eventual package, either explicitly or tacitly.
4.
On this basis the crucial test for alternative proposals is
whether they can be presented as moving closer to the model in the Basic Law for the 1999 Election Committee, while still being consistent with the 5 principles and producing a fair and open
election.
5.
This is a tall order. But our judgement is that only a variant of option (a) in the ExCo memorandum really meets this test. Options (b) and (c) bear little relationship to the BL model. Option (d) has attractions but goes beyond the BL by dividing up the entire working population into occupational groups rather than following the BL's stipulation that members of the Election Committee will be returned by organisations and corporate bodies. For that reason, I agree with Lady Dunn's comment in ExCo that it moves in the opposite direction from that in which China wants to go.
6.
Option (a) lacks the simplicity and clarity of the Governor's proposal. But it does offer a method of electing members of the Election Committee without the need for a wholly separate set of elections for this purpose. Functional constituency electors would simply be electing members of the Election Committee as well as their functional constituency representative, rather like US electors vote for a Senator and a Mayor on the same ballot.
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