Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
responsibility of the [SAR] Government". The SAR authorities alone, the ICJ report says, should be capable of deciding when "turmoil" is beyond their control.
2.9 LOST DEMOCRACY
Whether or not the new Governor's proposals, as outlined earlier, breach the Basic Law or whether they are simply an extension of what is permissible under its provisions, the fact remains that the official agreements to increase the franchise at the 1995 elections are certainly more limited than the reforms put forward by Mr Patten.
There will be no appreciable democracy on the basis of universal suffrage in Hong Kong at least until 2007, even after which its extension is in serious doubt. The Basic Law stipulates that the legislature should have no more than 20 directly elected seats out of 60 by 1997; this number would increase to 24 in 1999, and to 30 in 2003.16 If, after 2007, there was a need to amend these provisions, it would, however, require the consent of at least two-thirds of the legislature as well as that of the Chief Executive, who is appointed by Beijing.
17
Since the signing of the Joint Declaration, the whole question of the development of democracy in Hong Kong has been a controversial one, made all the more thorny by the events of June 1989 which forced the British government into promising to renegotiate with China a faster pace of democratization. The Joint Declaration had promised the territory a "high degree of autonomy" and stipulated that the SAR's legislature "shall be constituted by elections". While many believe this wording to imply universal suffrage, the Chinese and the British governments have taken it to mean by elections of one sort of another.
The issue of whether the number of directly-elected seats to the Council will be increased for the coming 1995 elections above the magic number of 20 is at present unclear. As a matter of policy, the British have said they will continue to seek an increase in the number of directly-elected seats to the Legislative Council, with Alistair Goodlad, Britain's spokesman on Hong Kong affairs, adding that the Basic Law could be changed if there was the "political will" to do so. However, the British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart Qian Qichen without success. It is clear that China is not prepared to compromise at all and, indeed, Mr Patten, in putting forward his reform proposals, is effectively assuming that there will not be any changes to the number of directly-elected seats. His proposals ensure that from a British perspective convergence with the Basic Law can and must be achieved.
16 Decision of the National People's Congress on the Method for the Formation of the First Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and Annex II, part I (1) of the Basic Law. The remainder will be elected by "functional constituencies" (30), and by an "election committee" (10 by 1997, 6 in 1999, reducing to none in 2003).
17
Basic Law, Annex II, part III.
17