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the bills are not passed by the Legislative Council, dissolution of the two Councils will not be pursued through administrative means. Lastly, I wish to point out that at yesterday's meeting, we read from the Government's Report the part about the consultation involving arts and culture as well as recreation. In fact if we read through the Consultation Report, we will find in paragraphs 23-26 in the Footnotes that the organizations the Government claimed to have consulted are so few that one can count them all with one's two hands. Members of the public have not been consulted. I would remind the Government that Appendix A to the Legislative Council Bylaws has listed out elected members of the arts and culture sector. There are more than 100 organizations. Mr. Chairman, if the Government considers that without consulting even these organizations, discussion with some members of the Sports Development Board or some of the organizations already represents full consultation, then I must say that the first phase of the consultation hardly has full coverage. I hope the approach for the latter phase in the coming months will be fairer, not fairer to us, but fairer to the public and the Legislative Council. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wu Chi-wat (in Cantonese):—During the consultation on the Review of District Organizations, a lot of people had the expectation that the future new structure would move towards further democratization and delegation of power. Hence we saw a lot of different opinions being expressed, but on further deliberation, our main concern was how power was going to be delegated to the public and civil organizations in a situation in which power was centralized. At last, the Consultation Report released a few days ago clearly told us that this was but a vain hope. We can see from paragraph 3.10 of the Report the attitude of the central government towards the need for centralization of power.
...... If one Municipal Council were to be made responsible for all matters related to food safety, environmental hygiene, arts and culture, and sports and recreation, the department underpinning it would comprise some 30,000 staff or almost one-sixth of the entire civil service', implying that it would be impossible for an elected representative institution to cope with the policy-making and monitoring functions.
More importantly, the Report points out,
'Politically, the implications of a Municipal Council with many more directly elected members than the Legislative Council are indeed very profound.'
These two paragraphs do suggest a retrogression in democratization. These two paragraphs clearly tell everyone that as citizens, we must not harbour the vain hope of having the power and right to choose our own government, because based on this logic, a democratic or elected representative body absolutely does not have the expertise to lead the government. But is this the
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