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for deciding on whether the political climate in 1988 or 1991 is ripe for such democracy. More recently, Mr. AKERS-JONES has spoken on the transfer of powers to the people and I do not know if he has made any reservation so that government will retain more leeway in the development of the political lines in Hong Kong in the coming years.
I support the motion.
MR. JOSEPH Y. S. CHAN (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman,
(1) I am in favour of step by step reforms.
The Green Paper on Representative Government proposes to develop progressively a system of government the authority of which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong. I am much in favour of these reforms.
(2) Indirect elections can hardly fulfil the aims proposed in the Green Paper. The Green Paper proposed some reasons against direct election. On these two issues, in my speech I have a detailed explanation on it, I will not repeat it. Because most of the points are in my paper and some members might have expressed similar views. What I want to state is on the change of political system and its content.
I want to raise an example, in Hong Kong, say the harbour of Hong Kong, there is a breakwater and the breakwater is outdated. When the sea is calm, the vessels would find it easy to stay, but in case of a stormy season, and the wave and tide are serious, then the breakwater would function effectively and could prevent the storm and wave and protect the vessels and interests of the people on the vessels. The breakwater has been under the maintenance of the British people; the breakwater is outdated but is functioning. However, the person in charge of the maintenance will change after 13 years and when a new time arrives, and when new leaders appear, the old leaders have to go, then these new leaders should have a breakthrough in the process of history. This is inevitable in the change of history; we should not criticize people as career politicians. The passing of old and the coming of new is an inevitable process; of course, we have to be prudent to create something new to cope with reality. However, we should not, out of the fear of something new, abide by the old system and protect an almost broken breakwater. The breakwater, of course, is outdated and is not beautiful; we could not demolish the whole breakwater and build a breakwater anew; this is not practical. Therefore, the change of the political system does not mean wiping off all old elements and replacing them with new ones. However, what we need is to give some maintenance to this breakwater and secure its foundation. On various spots of the breakwater, we have got to build up some fortresses and castles not only to beautify it but to make it functioning.
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On the part of maintenance, the present political system in the two Councils, most of the members of the Councils are administrators, and some of them are quite bureaucratic; they feel that they might be in control of great power. They might be genius administrators but they might not be talented politicians. They play two different roles; in the two Councils, they are the heads of the two Councils; at the same time, they are heads of Government departments; it leads to the control of the two Councils by administrators; administrators directing politicians rather than politicians directing the Government departments. It leads to great discrepancies under this situation; political changes should take into consideration these merits, to strengthen the position and function of the two Councils and to make the power of the Central Government cope with the future political changes. If political changes deal only with the election system and a number of the seats in the LegCo and ignore the function and term of reference of the two Councils, then the reforms would not be meaningful.
To build a sound foundation of the existing breakwater, I think that we ought to enhance democratic education in Hong Kong, to build a strong link; we have got to work at both the grass-root level and the higher level of the hierarchy, in order to have a very strong breakwater. To implement democracy in Hong Kong, we have got to enhance civic education in Hong Kong, so that Hong Kong people will be able to make decisions with more information. So that the general public will be able to have a say in the performance of the civil servants and the majority will rule and also the members of the public will learn to respect the interests of the minority. We should also educate the members of the public regarding their own responsibilities as citizens of the community. On the breakwater, we must also build some mini fortresses and, in some political reforms, we must work from the foundation; I think direct and indirect elections are not self-conflicting. In order to make the breakwater attractive and practical, we have to adopt this approach.
The Green Paper proposes two approaches to indirectly electing Legislative and Executive Councillors, precluding direct elections. The aims of the administrative reforms proposed can hardly be attained on account of the following reasons:
1. The proposal is theoretically unsound.
The highest organ of power formed of the elites elected by geographical and functional constituencies has limited representation as it represents the minority of such constituencies only. It does not have the full authority to represent the views of the people. These councillors who are not directly elected do not have their powers directly conferred on them by the masses. They are not, therefore, subject to supervision by the people, nor are they accountable to the masses. Their powers are derived from and thus rooted in the two electoral colleges.
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