TNAG-1439-FCO40-1923-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 103

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4. We agreed with the Paper that changes in the method

of appointment of ExCo Members were better avoided, and that

there should be no changes in ExCo's relationship with LegCo.

5. On LegCo membership and the question of direct elections,

we pointed out that the Paper said very little about the difficulties caused by the Chinese attitude. This might

possibly be because ExCo as a whole were

a whole were so familiar with

these difficulties, but we nevertheless felt that the Paper

gave a slightly misleading impression in this respect.

6. On the question of the Presidency of LegCo and references

to it in possible conclusions of the 1987 Review, you asked whether it made sense to try to get changes accepted by the Chinese at the same time as we were trying to get them to

accept the concept of direct elections. The Governor said

that he did not think that the changes envisaged would

necessarily be difficult for the Chinese. We asked whether

it was contemplated that option (c) in para 26 should be

implemented now so that we could move to option (a) in 1987,

or whether option (c) should be adopted in 1987. It was

accepted that the Paper was not entirely clear on this point

and Mr. Scott agreed to give further thought to this.

Basic Law Paper

7.

On the Basic Law Paper, we asked whether it was really

realistic to envisage putting over our views on the Basic

Law before the April meeting of the BLDC, and also whether

there was any hard evidence that the Chinese were already

drafting the Basic Law. On the second point, the Governor

confirmed that there was no hard evidence.

8.

On the first point, the Governor said that consideration.

of this Paper was rapidly leading him to the view that we had

to re-think our tactics for getting over our ideas to the

Chinese. He no longer believed that it would be possible

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/to do this