TNAG-1611-FCO40-2214-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 191

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where

legislation is urgently required, the

Government

also owes it to Members and to the people of Hong Kong to

avoid hasty (and therefore possibly ill-considered)

enactment of bills wherever possible. In the case of this

=

Bill, the urgency is entirely the Government's own making,

because becuase the mischief which it seeks to remedy, namely,

false claims of support by candidates

in elections, has

been known to the Government for at least the last 18

months. Yet it is only now, at the penultimate sitting

before the next

election cycle begins in January

in January 1988,

that the Government chooses to introduce the Bill, leaving

Members of this Council and the public just 12 days

between its publication and the deadline for enactment.

The

To make matters worse, the justification advanced

by the Government for the delay shows either muddled

thinking or conscious confusion of issues.

Government's argument is that because it had somehow

thought fit to include the question of name-dropping in

the Green Paper, it was not right to propose legislation

on the subject until after the publication of the Survey

Office report. The fallacy in this argument is two-fold :

(1)

In the first place, the Green Paper did not

seek the public's views on the question of

name-dropping by listing it as an option or

otherwise;

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