XN000022-1995-09-17 — Page 8

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Elections acceptable to the people: Governor

The fair and open Legislative Council elections have been proving extremely acceptable to the people of Hong Kong, the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, said after inspecting the vote-counting facilities and the Press Centre at the International Trademart in Kowloon Bay this (Sunday) evening.

"I think it is a vindication of the decisions taken by the Legislative Council in 1993 and 1994 with, of course, a lead being given by the Government," he said.

"What I think needs to be underlined once again is how Hong Kong takes these developments in its stride.

"As I have said before we've had a moderate sensible campaign. Today people are going about their civic responsibilities in a moderate and sensible way.

"Why should we expect anything else in Hong Kong because this is a sophisticated, well-educated community?"

Noting that the weather was still good, Mr Patten said he hoped that as many people as possible would take their civic responsibility seriously and vote.

Mr Patten said there were two lots of figures to be looking at.

"Looking in both the geographical and the functional constituencies, one is a percentage turnout, the other is the total number of people voting," he said.

With an increase of over 600,000 in the number of people on the electoral register, Mr Patten said a huge increase in the total number of people voting would be required in order to achieve the same percentage turnout rate as in the previous election.

"We have seen an increase of about 70,000 so far, which I'm delighted about.

"In other words, about 15 per cent more people have turned out at this stage than in 1991 but obviously I'd like to see the figures even higher and I'd like to see us getting as close to a million as we can by the end of the day," said the Governor,

End/Sunday, September 17, 1995