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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
It will be seen from clause 3 that it is proposed that the Urban Council should consist of not more than 13 members, that is to say, a Chairman appointed by the Governor, the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services as ex-officio vice-Chairman, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Director of Public Works, and the Inspector General of Police as ex-officio members and not more than eight additional members. The Sanitary Board, as members probably know, consists of the Head of the Sanitary Department, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Director of Public Works, the Medical Officer of Health and not more than six additional members, making a maximum of ten.
Sub-clause (10) of clause 3 automatically converts the six additional members of the Sanitary Board into additional members of the Urban Council until the three years period of their original election or appointment runs out. This makes for continuity and will ensure that vacancies in the new Council will not occur simultaneously. Consequently only two new additional members will be required for the first Council, one of whom will be elected and the other nominated for a period of three years. The electorate proposed is much the same as the existing Sanitary Board electorate. It consists primarily of persons on the Jurors Lists who will be placed on the first part of the electorate register. There will be a second part to the register in which will be placed the names of applicants belonging to certain groups of persons who it is considered would have been included in the Jurors Lists but for the nature of their occupations. These groups, numbered (a) to (j) in clause 3 (4), correspond roughly with the groups (a) to (j) of the Sanitary Board electorate, but persons exempted from jury service by the Governor in Council have been added to group (b), and reporters, unless they happen also to be sub-editors, have been omitted from group (e). The reason for this omission calls, I think, for some explanation. Under the Jury Ordinance, No. 6 of 1887, the entire staff of every daily newspaper in the Colony is exempt from jury service. When part 2 of the electoral register was established by Ordinance No. 6 of 1927 it was realised that, if every member of the staff of every newspaper in the Colony was included in the register, a large number of persons ineligible on other grounds for jury service would get a vote under the general exemption given by 4 (6) of the Jury Ordinance, 1887. Con- sequently the Legislature in 1927 limited group (e) to editors, sub-editors and reporters. When, however, the Registrar of the Supreme Court came to make up his register for the Sanitary Board electorate he found that a large number of persons who would never have been considered for jury service claimed the right to be included in the register under the somewhat elastic title of "reporter" to one or other of the local vernacular papers. now suggested that group (e) should be limited, to editors and That is why it is sub-editors, the latter title being generally wide enough to include those members of the local press who, but for their occupation, would be required to render jury service.
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