The alternative of dividing the electoral college into four or five regional groups is not supported. The member elected by each such group would have to represent roughly 1 million people which would still be an unrealistically large number and would not be so easily adaptable to the introduction of direct elections.
20
The qualifications to be a candidate for election by the electoral college would remain as proposed in the Green Paper.
The functional constituencies
serve
more
Some
21
It was proposed in the Green Paper that the present informal system of selecting Unofficial members of the Legislative Council from functional constituencies should be developed into a more formal representative system by the introduction of appropriate arrangements for the election by each of the functional constituencies of one ΟΙ representatives to
on the Legislative Council. examples of how this might be done were given and some possible functional constituencies were mentioned. It was proposed that in order to qualify as an elector in any of the functional constituencies it would normally be necessary to be a registered elector on the general electoral roll. It was also proposed that these arrangements should
be introduced progressively, with six Unofficial members being elected by functional constituencies in 1985 and 12 in 1988.
22
Although there has been considerable comment and a large measure of public support for the concept of functional constituencies, there have been many requests for more information about how the constituencies will be defined, which constituencies will be selected and how the elections will be conducted, etc. Some commentators have criticised the concept on the grounds that it favours professional people and wealthier groups in the
the community. Doubts have also been expressed about its feasibility.
23
of
are
Concern has been voiced about the desirability providing seats in Legislative Council purely because of affiliation to selected trades and professions which capable of lobbying their wishes and problems anyway, in the normal course of events, without such preferential treatment; further development of representative government should provide a satisfactory spread of experts' by standard type elections without the need for such specialization in this stage.
CONFIDENTIAL
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