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"Policy formulation is clearly the responsibility of the executive. The Government is expected to give a lead. It will, I hope, be obvious from all I have said so far this afternoon that we will be providing that leadership.
"But this leadership must continue to be constrained by accountability, through this Council, to the community.
"The role of the Legislative Council is different.
"The community expects Members to scrutinise the Government's proposals carefully, to criticise where necessary and, at times, to protest against them. The Council has, of course, been doing this in the recent past, and in this sense, the role of
the Council has not changed.
"But while the recent election has not given the Council a mandate to operate as an alternative administration, it is the first Council in Hong Kong's history to be entirely elected. Your mandate in performing your important oversight role has, therefore, clearly been enhanced," said Mr Patten.
"This Hong Kong system, with an executive-led administration accountable to an increasingly-elected legislature, has worked very well in the last four years.
"Despite all the gloomy forebodings in 1991, there has been no constitutional gridlock. On the contrary, the Government's legislative and financial programmes have been dealt with by the Council fairly and expeditiously.
"Over the last two years, the Government has presented some of the most complex and, frequently, controversial bills ever introduced into the Legislative Council. They have had far-reaching consequences for Hong Kong."
The Governor said these included constitutional development, setting up the fair and open system of elections which went off so successfully last month; establishing Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal and ending uncertainty about our judicial system after 1997; creating legal remedies against discrimination on grounds of sex or disability; providing the funding and the corporate structure which will enable us to complete construction of the airport in just two years from now; and extending the right to membership of a properly-run provident fund to every member of the workforce.
"We will have just as much to do in this new session, and I am convinced that, given frank dialogue and goodwill, we can complete our agenda.
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