TNAG-1840-FCO40-2615-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 67

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION

DSR 11C (Revised 5/87)

Boards. The other 32 members of the Legislative Council

were either officials (10) or appointed members (22).

Top Secret

Secret

Confidential

Restricted

Unclassified

PRIVACY MARKING

In Confidence

33. The 1984 White Paper also considered the question

of direct elections to the Legislative Council.

The Hong

Kong Government noted that although there was strong

public support for the idea of direct elections,

there was little support for such elections in the

immediate future. They

undertook to hold a review in

1987, before the 1988 elections, to give an opportunity

for further consultation about the development of

representative government, including specifically the

introduction of direct elections.

34. The review duly took place in 1987. The options

were set out in a Green Paper "The 1987 Review of

Developments in Representative Government" published in

May that year. It covered many aspects of representative

government, among them the question of whether, and if so

when, there should be a directly elected element in the

Legislative Council. A Survey Office was set up to

collect and report on public opinion on the Green Paper.

It operated outside the ordinary machinery of government

and without interference from the administration.

independent monitors were appointed to oversee its work

and to ensure that the Office carried out its duties in a

fair and objective way. The Review generated

Two

considerable public interest. The sounding of public

opinion took many forms and did not rely solely on the

results of individual polls or surveys, though a number