7.
I would just add one other word. At every stage, in the last couple of years, at every stage of our electoral cycle, people have said that we'd fall flat on our face. We had District Board Elections on a wholly democratic basis for the first time, and what was the result? More people voted in District Board Elections than ever before in Hong Kong. We had Municipal Council Elections for the first time on the basis of total democracy, and what was the result? More people voted in Municipal Council Elections than had ever voted in Municipal Council Elections before in Hong Kong. I'm sure that the Legislative Council Elections this September will be equally successful, even if not everybody in this Chamber is equally successful. And part of the credit for that should go to Mr Justice Woo and his colleagues on the Boundary and Election Commission who have, I think, done a superb job in often difficult circumstances and have done that job while retaining the respect of the whole community. We have, in Hong Kong, incredibly complicated electoral arrangements. It is part of our unique intellectually exciting progress towards democratisation, and after 1997, when the community can move swiftly to total democracy, it will all be much easier. In the meantime, with the Election Committee, with the functional constituencies, with registration across the board which attempts to be fair all round, there are complications but it is a mark of the maturity and good sense of the people of Hong Kong that they make these arrangements work so successfully. And nobody should be surprised that more and more and more of them wish to go and cast their ballots.
Mr Henry Tang: Mr President, Governor, actually, what you have mentioned about the old corporate voting, it's actually not a company who walked into the Electoral Office and cast its vote - but rather a nominee of the corporation - and this nominee -
Governor: They sometimes cast more than one vote.
Mr Henry Tang: Yes. No, actually he only had one vote. If he cast his vote in one of the old FCs, then he cannot cast his vote for another company in another FC, he can only vote once in the FC - unless he's an engineer, then he can have another vote in the engineering one. Actually, I do put it to you that that person is a real person of the company, so that person is already a registered voter. So there is actually very little reason to remove that person or to de-register him in this new exercise, because effectively, having deregistered him, if he were it is very likely that he will now become a new functional the nine new functional voters rather than the old one, simply because he would have to take positive action to become an old one rather than remain as a new one.
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