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teaching not only recreational sports but also techniques in swimming, the effect of sports on the mental and physical development of individuals and relevant safety measures.
In many advanced countries such as Germany, Japan and the U.S. etc., P.E. lessons are compulsory in primary and secondary schools and there are special P.E. courses for the Bachelor, Master and even Doctor degrees. The recently established 'Sports in Education Working Party' whose members include the staff in charge of physical education in the various post-secondary institutions and representatives from the Education Department, supports in principle the proposal for establishing diploma or degree courses on physical education. Working in this direction, the authorities concerned should make P.E. lessons compulsory in primary and secondary schools as well as universities. Professional degree courses should also be established. To arouse the interest among youths in sports, the authorities concerned should analyse and list clearly the multitude of job opportunities for athletic talent. Apart from that, parents should show more enthusiasm in encouraging their children to participate in sports. We hope our youths will, through participation in sports, come to have healthy minds and bodies and the urge for advancement, as well as learn the spirit of unity and cooperation.
About the review on the system of government to be conducted next year, I think the parties concerned should consider carefully the good and bad effects a hasty reform may have on Hong Kong's economic prosperity. Both merits and demerits should be evaluated with caution before coming to a decision. I cannot, in any way, imagine any merit a radical change can bring. In the past few decades, changes in local government have been slow with little political participation by the public who, instead, have concentrated on industrial and commercial activities. This no doubt has brought about today's prosperity. Should the system of government be changed too radically, harmful effects would come one after another.
I am for democracy, but democracy does not necessarily mean one man one vote. Of the various elections having been held here, how many voters really know the background of the candidates to whom they have cast a vote? Or do the voters understand the contents of their platforms and their effects on the whole society? I am certain that many of them ‘do not know what they are choosing'. In indirect elections, however, voters, for example, representatives of various functional constituencies, must be responsible for what they have voted. Their votes can fully reflect the views of all sectors while selecting more accurately the talents who can really contribute to the society.
In conclusion, I do not think direct election of the one-man-one-vote mode is the only way to return power to the people'. It is not necessary to fully implement the one-man-one-vote format before 1997. We can instead try it out step by step and make necessary adjustment according to the results.
(Mr. Lo King-man left the meeting at 4.58 p.m.)
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MR. WALTER M. SULKE (in English): Mr. Chairman, normally on this occasion it beholds the Chairman of a committee to talk about the committee's work during the past year, but luckily for all of us I have already made that speech and the only thing I want to say as Chairman of the Keep Hong Kong Clean Committee is that I am very happy indeed that this Council has taken the initiative to organize in the 1987/88 financial year a large Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign, and I am very happy that the Regional Council and the Central Government are joining us in this endeavour and may I say in this connection that I want to congratulate Mr. MAN Sai-cheong on an excellent speech and I support every word he said.
Now, before coming to the real purpose of today's debate, let me just quickly deal with three matters very close to my heart.
First of all I am tabling a speech about the Daya Bay nuclear power station which I made in August and which recommends urgently to all concerned to postpone the building of the nuclear power station until such time as commercially viable inherently safe nuclear power stations are available. I am making the same appeal today, and I also want to point out that some of the questions I asked the Government in my Annual Conventional Debate Speech of 1984, two years ago, have still not been answered, and I hope that they will now be answered.
Secondly, let me make a plea to Government to re-introduce Summertime. The need for worldwide energy saving is as pressing today as it was 70 years ago when summertime was first introduced. And the main argument used by this Government to abolish Summertime in Hong Kong, namely that we have to be on the same time as China is presumably still valid and since China now uses summertime, logically, Hong Kong should follow suit. It would certainly save this Council money and I am sure would be welcomed by the younger generation, enabling them to make more use of daylight in summer for recreational purposes.
Thirdly, let me appeal to the powers that be to donate those wonderful electronic boxes standing around at certain street corners commemorating ERP (may it rest in peace!) to our new Science Museum when that is finished in three years time.
Now let me come to the real purpose for this debate, which has been especially pulled forward from January into December so as to enable us to put in our two-bits worth into Government's review of LEGCO'S composition and function as from 1988 before the Government's Green Paper on the Further Development of Representative Government comes out. I am not very sure whether this will really be useful because I think the Government is fully aware of the views of individual members, we've expressed them often enough, and, in any case, it is really going to be much more important to comment after the Green Paper comes out than before it is finished.
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