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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL 11 December 1984
II. However the White Paper has yet room for improvement:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
The Government, aware of the majority of the people of Hong Kong being in favour of direct election, should have set down clean-cut provision as to how direct election is to be carried out. This should be dealt with definitely in 1987 when there will be a review to assess progress made in the development of representative government.
It is unfair and injudicious for each constituency to represent approximately 500,000 people with a single member to be elected from two district boards, thus causing undesirable conflicts between the people of the two districts and between the members of the two district boards.
There should not be only a single seat for the Urban Council and the Regional Council respectively as they each represent quite a large number of population.
There are no main guidelines which have been applied in determining and selecting the representative organizations of the 9 functional constituencies. It causes dissatisfaction of the rest of the functional constituencies.
The 9 functional constituencies will soon become the new privileged class to the detriment of social harmony and co-operation.
The White Paper has covered the stage of development for 1985 only. It shows the Government has just managed to 'muddle along', without any long-term development plan out for the future. No mention has yet been made of the functional reform of the Legislative Council and Executive Council. A political reform through election only is not likely to bring about any substantial change in the government, thus weakening the effect and significance of the reform.
III. Some proposals:
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The development of representative government in Hong Kong should take into account both direct and indirect elections. The Government should consider changing the indirect elections by 'electoral college' into direct elections.
The number of functional constituencies should be increased and form an 'electoral college' to elect their representatives among themselves to the Legislative Council to enforce representation. There should be at least one member elected from each District Board; those of dense population should return more members. There should be 4 members elected from the Urban Council and the Regional Council respectively.
Those who belong to two or more representative organizations should be entitled to vote two or more times, or to vote once if they so choose.
7.
8.
9.
Conclusion:
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The representative government should be so developed as to fit in with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Government which comes into being in 1997. The U.K. government should lose no time to negotiate with the People's Republic of China so that the new representative government may go hand in hand with the Chinese Fundamental Constitution. This would call for the Government to go through a real substantial political reform.
We must therefore take into consideration the integrated interest of the people of Hong Kong as a whole rather than suppress the democratic reform of the government or just look after the interest of the few privileged classes to the detriment of the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.
Religious organizations have all along contributed to the maintenance of our spiritual and moral values and they have also contributed a lot in the field of education and welfare and I hope that in 1987 in the review to be made, we would not neglect this particular functional group.
The White Paper, with all its shortcomings on its head, is decided by a positive improvement, worthy of our support. I do hope that further development will bring about more favourable conditions, liberal and progressive, leading to stability and prosperity, with government by the people of Hong Kong as its goal for 1997.
Mr. Chairman, I sincerely support your motion.
(Mr. L. H. Kwan left at this point—3:30 p.m.)
MR. LAWRENCE H. L. FUNG (in English):—Mr. Chairman, thank you for recognizing me. Hong Kong has prosperity because we have had a stable Government all these years. By stability, I also mean predictability in the sense that when we go to bed one night, a certain form of Government is there and next morning when we wake up, the same Government is still there. Every time we go through certain hiccups in Hong Kong whether it is civil commotion, the stock market goes down, the Hong Kong dollar value goes down, people try to immigrate, so the most essential element in any sort of political reform is political stability. Now political stability does not necessarily mean that we do it step by step, although the White Paper on Further Development of Representative Government certainly is a small step in a giant direction, the only way we can have our cake and eat it is to have the Hong Kong Government lay out the entire blueprint for a representative form of Government whether it is a democratic form of Government, wider representative form of Government or Government by consensus. I find that these are political phraseologies that have not been clearly defined in the White Paper, I am not trying to be critical of the Hong Kong Government because they may well be in a situation that is not within their own control. As I have said so, in my speech on September 4th,
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