29 October 1992
William Ehrman Esq Political Adviser HONG KONG
BY FAX
CONFIDENTIAL
MAR
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William,
HONG KONG: MINISTERIAL EXCHANGES ON ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS
The Secretary of State has asked me (in the nicest possible way) to do a post-mortem on how the important points tucked away in these Ministerial exchanges apparently came to be overlooked during the drafting of the Governor's proposals.
I do not propose that we should all spend a long time on this, but I do need to establish the facts. The honest answer as far as we here are concerned is that, as a result of turnover of staff, we were blissfully unaware of these exchanges. As you and others will remember, our system is not sufficiently good to turn up papers unless one knows pretty clearly what to look for. We do not have a proper guide or index to the many exchanges with the Chinese from 1984 onwards: and of course much of the paperwork was personal and did not go onto departmental files.
It would be useful to know what the position was in Hong Kong. I do not think that the 1990 exchanges were referred to in our various discussions over the summer with you about the composition of the Election Committee. Nor were they mentioned in the papers prepared for the Governor by Michael Sze giving options for the composition of the Committee. But I noticed that the Governor, during his talks with Lu Ping, did say that he had taken the precaution of reading some of these earlier exchanges between the two sides, and later that he had copies of the 1990 correspondence in front of him. Did you therefore come across them in preparation for the Governor's visit? Or were they part of your consideration of the Election Committee issue throughout the summer?
(If so, it is a bit curious that they were not mentioned in Michael Sze's papers).
elect.arrang.GEN.bern
CONFIDENTIAL