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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
This is dangerous not only to traffic but to the lives of the residents in the Resettlement Estate on both sides of the road.
Will the Chairman suggest to the Traffic Advisory Committee to consider putting a zebra crossing or building an over-head bridge at a point along the 840 ft. length of the safety fence?
THE CHAIRMAN replied as follows:-
Following the receipt of your question, Sir, I informed Mr. WATSON, this Council's representative on the Traffic Advisory Committee, of the matter and asked him to bring your suggestion to the attention of that committee.
MR. BERNACCHI:--As a supplementary, Mr. Chairman, surely this is of greater concern than merely reference to an advisory committee? It is the concern of the Resettlement Policy Select Committee if occupants of one of our estates cannot get into the estate in view of the traffic barrier and I suggest that this matter be discussed between the Superintendent of Traffic and a representative of the Resettlement Policy Select Committee.
CHAIRMAN:-I would have no objection to that, Sir.
MR. WATSON:-Mr. Chairman, may I ask a supplementary question? I take it that you do not want me to bring this matter up with the Advisory Committee?
CHAIRMAN:-That depends upon the questioner.
MR. CHEUNG:-Mr. Chairman, I would like the matter to be considered by all parties concerned.
MOTIONS.
MR. B. A. BERNACCHI moved the following motion:
That the whole question as to the enlargement of the electorate at Urban Council elections and the present system of registration of voters be referred to the Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee and
That their report be laid on the table for discussion at a future meeting of the Council.
He said Mr. Chairman, I do not like to be long over this motion. It is already late and my motion is only the first stage in the procedure envisaged. As Members will have noticed from my question asked last month, I moved a motion a decade ago which was passed by the then Members of the Urban Council proposing that His Excellency the Governor should appoint a commission to inquire into the enlargement of the electorate. The present motion is to appoint our Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee to go into this question in the first instance. Both the Senior Appointed Unofficial Member and myself are on the Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee and perhaps I should say, anyhow, I think that this Committee would be the right committee to refer this matter to and not appoint an ad hoc committee. I would draw Members' notice to the final paragraph of my motion, namely, "That their report be laid on the table for discussion at a future meeting of the Urban Council." I hope full advantage will be taken by Members to speak in the resulting discussion, should this motion be passed.
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I do not think that many Members will disagree when I say that the present electorate is too few and too unbalanced and whilst I must not be taken to suggest that it has in fact happened, I think it would be all too easy for some unmitigated scoundrel in the future to improperly influence the present small electorate by promises of employment or even in some cases by pure bribery and corruption.
Whilst the electorate are on the whole clean and incorruptible (after all they elected me several times in the past), (Laughter). I feel that the time has come for the question of the enlargement of the electorate to be gone into and I couple this with a suggestion to the Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee, again if my motion is passed, that they consider whether a ward system would be workable in Hong Kong as it is worked in the majority of the big cities in the world to-day. I have deliberately not gone into the question of my particular views as to how the electorate should be enlarged or the views of the Reform Club or the views, if at all different, of the Civic Association, let alone the perhaps different views of the Appointed Unofficials. But the fact remains that the voting list consists to-day of under 30,000 in a population of about 3.4 million, and it consists of a lot of names that are dead wood, dead wood in the sense that they have left Hong Kong or left their former addresses and cannot now be traced, or in the sense unfortunately that they are just plain dead. (Laughter). The electorate has not been enlarged since about 1952 and there has been no general revision of the voting lists, apart from additions of more names since 1953.
With these words I beg to move the motion:-
"That the whole question as to the enlargement of the electorate at Urban Council elections and the present system of registration of voters be referred to the Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee and