(4)
(5)
Clause 24: There have been questions as to whether
the officers of the Council will be "untrained of
police duties and powers" and they may abuse their
power. I trust the answer to that must be that the
officers must be trained to understand the limit of
their powers under this bill and will carry out their
duties under the overall supervision of the President.
Clause 25: It is said that the President's powers are
too wide if he can exercise them even when the Council
has been dissolved. As I have mentioned before, it is
envisaged that the President will be elected by the members of this Council. In any event, Clause 23
remains operative and the President should lawfully
exercise his power even if the Council is dissolved.
Clause 25 is necessary to ensure that the house
keeping of the Council is still under control even
when the Council is not sitting, we therefore propose
no amendments.
Turning now to the question of deferment, it has been
urged upon us that the bill may still require amendment in one way or the other. I have gone through the 15 sets of fresh
representations and found that the points of substance have
either been covered in the new text or are dealt with by
further amendments, e.g. the word 'insult' in Clause 19(a), and
Mr Harvey Stockwin's liberal interpretation of Clause 14 (2) on
Sunday the 23rd. The other comments a show a divergence of
opinion, e.g. a great majority of organizations accept the new
Clause 23 as amended. The Civic Association and the Hong Kong
Federation of Catholic Students ask for its deletion
altogether. The Hong Kong Affairs Society accepts the new text of the bill; other organizations continue to pick up points
from each other and ask for further amendments. There are also
many philosophical points made on how the Legislative Council
should develop in the future. Also many District Board members
have already made known their views to us without a formal
No comments yet.
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