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"Provisional" legislature a bad idea
It would be wrong and damaging to scrap the Legislative Council and replace it with a non-elected body, the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, said in delivering his 1996 Policy Address today (Wednesday).
"That remains our unshakeable position," he said, stressing that a 'provisional' legislature allowed to operate before July 1, 1997, would be destabilising.
"We believe that there is no reason why this Council should not be allowed to serve the full four-year term for which it was elected."
Mr Patten said British ministers had made the Hong Kong Government's view crystal clear on the establishment of a "provisional" legislature.
"If the electoral arrangements that the previous Legislative Council endorsed are to be replaced (a bad policy, but one that we are told will not - sadly - be reversed) then will what is to be put in their place accommodate democratic views and pro- democracy legislators?" he asked.
He said the bulk of any preparatory groundwork for the establishment of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government would fall on the Chief Executive (Designate) and his or her team, in line with Hong Kong's well-established executive- led system.
A number of articles of the Basic Law set out clearly the procedure that needs to be adopted for the development of policy and the introduction, consideration and approval of legislation in SAR.
"Any laws that emerged from a 'provisional' legislature without being subject to this procedure would inevitably be vulnerable to subsequent legal challenge in the courts," said Mr Patten.
"A 'provisional' legislature is bad enough. The suggestion that it could operate in parallel with this Council makes a bad idea even worse. I sincerely hope that, even at this late stage, this bad idea can be thought about again.
"It is unnecessary as well as provocative and we will have nothing to do with it. We will not assist a 'provisional' legislature's establishment, its operation or its ability to withstand legal challenge," said the Governor.