CONFIDENTIAL
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that a number of the seats in Legislative Council should be allocated for direct election by 1988, with the objective of having direct elections to all seats in the Legislative Council by 1997.
(b)
Electoral college
3.7
The Green Paper proposed that an electoral college should be formed consisting of all the elected and, to start with, all the appointed members of the District Boards, the Urban Council and the new Regional Council. The electoral college would elect six representatives to be members of the Legislative Council in 1985, with a view to increasing to 12 members by 1988.
3.8
The concept of an electoral college was on the whole well received by those in support of the indirect election process. Most of the comments centred on the number of seats allocated.
it was generally considered that six seats were too small a number. Several District Boards suggested that there should be one seat for each of the 18 District Boards; the Chairman of the Urban Council suggested that the two Regional Councils should have four seats. The Heung Yee Kuk suggested that it should be included in the electoral college. The proposal to set up three regional electoral colleges for Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, and to allocate the number of seats on a population basis had also received some support from District Boards.
3.9
On the procedure for election, two elected Urban Councillors suggested that only elected members should be allowed to stand for election. The proposal that only those with a "high percentage" of votes in the District Board/Urban Council elections would be eligible to stand for the election to that Legislative Council, received little support.
3.10
Critics of the concept of electoral college and of indirect election used the argument that indirect election could be manipulated by government. There was no evidence that this point of view was shared by the general public.
CONFIDENTIAL
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