Press Reports and Public Reaction
During the period under review, the Green Paper on district administration continued to attract comments and discussions from Urban Councillors, community leaders, kaifong and social associations, scholars and columnists.
According to the Chinese Press from June 12 to 17, the proposals in the Green Paper were brought up for discussion at meetings of various kaifong and community organisations, including the Hong Kong and Kowloon Kaifong Research Council, the Federation of Community Organisation in Yuen Long, the North Point Kaifong Association and the Heung Yee Kuk. They all expressed deep concern about and keen interest in the proposals and said that they would carry out an opinion survey among their members with a view to submitting a report to the authorities.
Several Chinese papers and the English Star gave special coverage to a Heung Yee Kuk meeting on June 16 whose newly-elected chairman, Mr. Lau Wong-fat, said "in- compatibility" between indigenous people and new comers to the New Territories would deepen under a proposal in the Green Paper which divided them into two categories.
At the meeting, the immediate past chairman of the Kuk, Mr Stephen Wong, said the proposed district board should not be chaired by Goyernment officials. He added that the Kuk chairman and vice-chairmen should be ex-officio members on the boards.
Another former chairman of the Kuk, Mr. Chan Yat-sun, while describing the proposals as "timely," called for well-thought-out policies to cope with administrative reforms.
In a long article on June 12 analysing proposals outlined in the Green Paper, Miss Margaret Ng, a columnist of the Hong Kong Standard, urged the Government to make greater efforis to propose a wider and clearer scope of the work of the district boards and provide them with realistic funds to achieve projects of significance.
On the same day, the Hong Kong Economic Journal quoted a high-ranking official of the British Government as saying in London that reforms proposed in the Green Paper, unlike proposals for constitutional reforms in Macau, would not receive a cool response from China. He also disagreed with a suggestion that the Green Paper had paved the way for "an independent Hong Kong."
In a special article in the Hong Kong Standard on June 16, Professor Peter Harris of the University of Hong Kong said the significant change in the whole document was its proposal to extend the franchise.
Professor Harris believed the new system would be successful in pro- ducing two to three times more voters than under the present system.
However, he criticised the Green Paper for making no attempt to extend universal suffrage to the Legislative Council nor to alter the elective balance in the present Urban Council, either in the future Urban Council or in the new district boards.
In his special column on June 19, Mr. Barry Choi, the political editor of the South China Morning Post, wondered whether the new district boards in both the New Territories and the urban areas would be turned into conflicting groups with elected members having it our with their appointed colleagues, not unlike the case with the Urban Council at present.
Of suffrage, he said it should be extended to people aged 18 and the number of years of residence should be raised from three to at least five years.
A columnist of the Centre Daily News commented on the Green Paper on the same day. While criticising the Government for "playing with democracy," he said the Green Paper was only an extension of the upper structure of the Government's "consultative machinery" to include elected Urban Councillors.
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