XN000022-1995-06-01 — Page 7

7

· 5-

I think one of the reasons is, for those working persons, about 2.7 million working persons who are in Hong Kong, are now registered under the nine new functional constituencies, and they all received this letter urging them to register in the old 21 FCs. And I don't know whether you personally have read this letter or not but this letter is mentally challenging, to say the least. My wife has a university degree; she received one of these she read it twice and couldn't understand what it was talking about. So, she brought it home to me and I supposedly know quite a lot about this; I read it twice and I had to call up the enquiry number to make sure my understanding is correct. So I do urge you to read it, I think it will make very interesting reading.

-

But the result of it is that because it is a very confusing letter, so a lot of people just simply don't understand what is required of them, because what is required of them is positive action, not negative action like the nine new functionals. The nine new functionals, if a person is already a registered voter and the employer enters his name on the roster, then he needs to do nothing. He receives a letter from the Electoral Office saying that he is now registered in one of the nine new functionals. But at the same time, everybody in the old functional constituencies, the 21, have been cancelled, so therefore you have to take positive action to re-register yourself in one of the 21 old functionals.

Now, in some of the old functionals there's actually an accumulation of three elections, from 1985, 1988 and 1991, so therefore, first of all, why does the Electoral Office actually expect that an accumulation of three elections, of three registration exercises, what is the reason for cancelling, just taking everybody off the Electoral Roll, rather than just sending a letter to those who are registered in two - one of the old ones and one of the new ones and asking them to elect which one do you wish to register in?

Governor: I won't dwell on some of the inherent virtues and perhaps difficulties of a system of functional constituencies, though I know that some Honourable Members, particularly one whose body-language we all much appreciate, have strong views on this subject. But if I can say at the outset, what I think has been interesting about the voter registration in the functional constituencies is that where we were told we would be facing insuperable problems, things have gone reasonably well. Not as well as anybody could have liked because everybody would like a hundred per cent registration, but things have actually gone reasonable well. Where, apparently, there was no difficulty or problem there have been larger challenges, including mental challenges. In the new functional constituencies we will have registered - which given that the geographical registration has to be, I think, the basis for our Electoral Roll we will have registered somewhere around 900,000, maybe rather more when the books are finally closed. What that will actually mean is that with the older functional constituencies we will have about a million registered, which is I think fourteen times as many as were registered in functional constituencies the last time there were elections, which I regard I'm sure everybody regards - as a welcome increase in participation by the community in voting in Hong Kong.

-