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municipal council to manage Hongkong's internal affairs.
The newspaper comments on the meeting were as critical of Mr. Ryrie's management of the meeting as they had been on the first occasion. If the first meeting was a disaster, the follow-up was a fiasco.
An editor remarked: "It would be amusing were it not so painful and in fact discreditable.” Wonder was expressed as to how a group of successful businessmen could bungle an affair so completely.
The meeting followed the same course as the previous one, with disputes and wrangling over correct procedure and sides drawn for the several schemes under consideration.
Even if the meeting had been able to arrive at a decision, the composition of it would have mitigated against a general acceptance of the scheme voted for, because, according to an editor, the meeting was not representative.
There were some forty present but they were divided into two parties. The situation, as he explained it, was that “knowing two schemes would be submitted, friends of both schemes came to support, but the great bulk of the community stayed away. After what happened at the previous meeting it was not surprising that they did so."
As soon as the meeting opened, Mr. Francis began where he had left off at the former meeting. He proposed a committee be appointed to consider plans and report to yet another meeting. There was immediate resistance from a group who wanted no more delays. They pushed for a final decision to be made at the meeting. But a journalist felt the group was not being realistic: “That it is desirable a decision should be come to at once, no one will deny, but if what is desirable proves to be impossible it is no use butting one's head against a stone wall.”
One speaker proposed an immediate solution to the problem - drop all ambitious schemes. They would take much too long to