XN000022-1996-02-01 — Page 10

9.

Now I ask myself why in those circumstances - particularly given all the checks and balances which exist in the Basic Law which perhaps don't exist today - I ask myself why would anybody want to change those arrangements. Would people like to change those arrangements in order to make the arrangements for a Legislative Council election more fair, more free, more open? Is that what the argument is all about? Are we going to have an even more democratically elected Legislative Council if this one is, as a matter of ill-judgment, dismantled in 1997?

There is no need, there is no reason for dismantling this Legislative Council. I remind honourable members of something that I said earlier: Hong Kong is promised a steady and increasing pace of democratisation. We have only just started along the road. Either that process is genuine or it's not, and that I think is what the argument in 1992 and 1993 was largely about.

The President: You had.... already. Are you answered?

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that the question has not been

Mr Chan Kam-lam (in Chinese): Yes, my question is not answered. Thank you Mr President. With regard to my question, it is not a hypothetical question it's a reality. In fact the Governor has once said that he didn't want to see a second stove. And in fact the Preparatory Committee is doing what the Chinese side have planned, they are going to build the second stove and the Governor said he will co-operate fully with the Preparatory Committee. I find it strange that if he is thinking about another thing and he is doing something else, then how can he co-operate sincerely with the Preparatory Committee? I hope the Governor and the present team of senior officials will sincerely and truly co-operate with the Preparatory Committee.

We see that another debate on a resolution before coming to any agreement somebody brings something before the Council in order to achieve something. I don't want to see that again.

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Governor: Well, I think we're perhaps suffering from the stove metaphor. As I understand it, a second stove was a phrase coined for the Preliminary Working Committee and meant - whether this was the intention or not meant the attempt to have a rival centre of power in Hong Kong, another place where you could cook the dinner. I don't think that that is what the argument about the Legislative Council is about because we are talking, as I understand it, about a future stove rather than a second stove.

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