TNAG-1726-FCO40-2439-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1988 — Page 137

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system is not working well, why is it that there suggestion to improve it?

is no

for solishing this route

^

Sir, the reason set out in the White Paper which I Jinan out his

read is totally unconvincing. The point is that of over-

mein

lapping But if overlapping causes any difficulty why don't we not

make the constituencies for direct elections larger?

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do we say that we should have four or five large

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Why

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for the entire & writory, constituencies each returning two or three members to this

for example Council? We could have one constituency for the Hong Kong

island and two for Kowloon Kowloon East Kowloon West - and maybe one or two for the New Territories. Sir, even if we

intact. were to maintain the present geographical constituency in size

there is still an important difference between the two systems

and that is a point which has not been talked of often. Under the present system, the members elected via the electoral college from the pistrict Boards are themselves pistrict Board members and as a Pistrict Board members each of my colleagues

District Board member would have been elected from a very small constituency, of at most 25,000 Not voters, but people. Then these members in the pistrict Board would elect among themselves one representative into this Council. So they

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are basically men of the district.

people,

But if we were to have

500,000

вс

direct elections covering the same geographical constituency 24 each member, directly elected, will represent at least half a million 25 people, and they are more likely to be representatives of Hong

26 Kong rather than the districts.

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Therefore I submit, Sir,

that even if the two systems

we were to are different. I'm sorry--- even if you maintain the same geographical constituentcy for the two types of election, there

still are important differences which would justify their joint existence and both, with respect, will be of benefit to the Legislative Council. And, of course, the appointed seats would have to go first under the Joint Declaration and that is

why I see no reason at all why the directly elected members

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should not replace the appointed members so that we really 36 forward, step by step towards a fully elected legislature.

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