5
TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993
had been directly elected to the Legislative Council should not
be members of ExCo.
Against that background I had a series of talks when I arrived in Hong Kong. We put forward as a result of those talks proposals which, in our view, while probably representing a second best to many of the groups who had come to talk to us, represented pretty well a point of balance in the community. We did not press for an increase in the number of directly оп functional elected seats but
made other proposals We
constituencies, on the election committee, on the method of election to geographical constituencies and so on, which, in our view, commanded the broadest common ground in the community. They were proposals which equally, in our view, were wholly in line with the Joint Declaration and the basic law.
Our judgment about the point of balance in the community has been borne out by subsequent events because, even though the 'noise from the north' has reduced support for the proposals we put forward last October from about 6:1 to about 2-24:1, that support has remained pretty resilient over these months.
We put forward our proposals almost a fortnight after we had told Chinese officials about them. We put forward our proposals, not as a fait accompli but, as we said at the time, as a set of propositions that we wished to discuss with China as well as with the community. They were not, as I have said, proposals for a great extension in democracy in Hong Kong, whatever some of the They were headlines may occasionally have said subsequently. proposals for accomplishing what is my bottom line: that is, that the elections in 1995 should be held on a basis which is clean
/AND FAIR