XN000022-1993-04-06 — Page 4

TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993

democratic society. When they are criticising the decisions that we have reached in the last few months, the proposals we have put forward, some people ask us why we have come to this argument about democracy so late not, I think, that we are. But that is the point to which I will return. It is as though we were being pressed by our colleagues from the north to go faster towards democracy in the past.

You know the position that Hong Kong has been in: unlike virtually all our other dependent territories, unlike virtually all our other colonies, we have not been preparing Hong Kong for independence. We have in fact been preparing Hong Kong for the resumption of Chinese sovereignty. In those cases where we were preparing colonies for independence, we had a pretty familiar mix that we put in place: Westminster-style democracy, the rule of law, clean and honest government - we put that on the launching pad and we blasted the satellite off into independent orbit.

But that was not our task in Hong Kong. Far from us being pressed to move faster in the direction of pluralism and democracy, you will know that we were getting messages to go slower from our colleagues in the north. It is one reason why I think the Joint Declaration is such a very special document, because the Joint Declaration sets out very clearly a path to democracy for Hong Kong from the early 1980s onwards. It sets out an agreed series of steps which will, for example, result in the Legislative Council in 1995 being entirely elected and points to subsequent Legislativè. Councils having larger and larger

elements of direct election.

The argument that we have been having with China is about

/EXACTLY HOW